it against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for its failure to take action to protect juvenile swordfish. Under an agreement reached with NMFS, the agency agreed to issue a proposed rule in December 1999. The rule would close almost 200,000 square miles in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to long line fishing in order to protect baby swordfish and other ocean wildlife. The government will consider public comment on the rule until March 1, 2000. A final rule is due May 1. As the U.S. swordfish boycott begins and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) quotas are lowered long liners targeting of North Atlantic swordfish diminishes. This is causing unprecedented pressure on swordfish worldwide, particularly on Pacific populations and South Atlantic populations. Both are declining rapidly as has the North Atlantic population, according to Jim Chambers of Chambers and Associates, a marine fisheries consulting firm.Data from the National Marine Fisheries Service for the past five years show a great jump in U.S. swordfish imports, according to Fish Unlimited (FU): In 1995, the total was over 10 million pounds. By 1997, that had jumped almost 300 percent to over 34 million pounds. The figure increased still more in 1998 and decreased slightly last year, but was still up about 250 percent from 1995 levels.Particularly worrisome to FU’s Bill Smith is the new category of “frozen fillets” which opened up new avenues for swordfish importation: Almost half of the huge totals in 1997 and 1998 were in fact frozen fillets, most from Singapore. Also, most of the fresh Stanfield 3swordfish came from the Pacific as well. An estimated forty- percent of these Pacific swordfish are actually caught in the Atlantic by countries that are not affiliated with the ICCAT. They are then passed along through countries on the Pacific Ocean that have not met their quota and sold as Pacific swordf...
