Dr. Cecil Beamish:

The legal position is quite clear. As it stands at present we cannot license and permit a directed bluefin tuna fishery, whether on a sea angling vessel or otherwise. We have been exploring for some time whether there was any means of securing support at the EU and at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna for the introduction of a scientific tag and release scheme and we have had some correspondence with the EU Commission on that issue. However, no such scheme has been approved at this point.