Kaká has sadly been left out of Brazil’s roster for the upcoming 2014 World Cup but he still very much on the list of prospective players to move to the MLS later on this summer. Along with the AC Milan midfielder, Anderlecht midfielder Sacha Kljestan’s name was “tossed around the rumor mill” according to a Fox Sports article.

Many successful international players have migrated from the European league to Major League Soccer. David Beckham had a great run with the Los Angeles Galaxy. Theiry Henry is still enjoying his time with the New York Red Bulls.

The European soccer season is slowly coming to an end, and with the attention slowly turning to the American soccer league (leaving out the World Cup from this discussion), now is the best time to compare the two leagues and how both handle their transfer windows.

The European Transfer Market

The common rationality for any transfer window is that Team A offers a certain amount for a specific player, the player’s current team (Team B) negotiates the prices offered, negotiations reach a certain agreement and finally Team A obtains the player that they desired.

It’s simple, right? Not quite.

The European transfer market is one of the most expensive markets in the world, millions of Euros are exchanged every season.  Speculations influence transfers; dozens of media stories being released on who might be sold, sports analysts doing multiple segments on the subject and now, social media users voice their opinions on which players are the best fit for their teams. 

But aside from speculation is the freedom that the European leagues offer. For one, there is no salary cap. Teams can spend as much money as they want on the player and resources of their choice.  Back in 2003, Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea and took over west London with his one billion euro investment. This sort of “big money” is not just seen in the English league, but in Spanish and Italian leagues as well.

The other factor is the contingency that allows players to leave their clubs at any time—before, during or after the transfer window—and the club is responsible for making those arrangements happen. The most recent example of this was when Juan Mata, unhappy with Chelsea, was able to leave and be traded to Manchester United for 37.1 million Euros.

While this trade still occurred during the time of the transfer window, it does prove a point when it comes to the freedom that players, even big commodities such as Juan Mata, have when it comes to playing for the teams of their choice.

But as previously mentioned, players are able to leave regardless of the “boundaries” that the transfer window claims to have.

As the English Premiere League website states:

There are two transfer windows in each Barclays Premier League season.

The first commences at midnight on the last day of the season and ends on 31 August if a working day – or, if not, on the first working day thereafter, at a time determined by the Board.

The second transfer window commences at midnight on the 31 December and ends on the 31 January if a working day, and again, if not, on the first working day thereafter, at a time determined by the Board.

Temporary transfers can be made permanent outside of the transfer windows. For further information please see the rules in the Premier League Handbook.

This, also, is the same framework used in other European soccer leagues.

The Dilemma

As the rule with materialistic items is “the more exotic, the more expensive” the same rule is somewhat used when it comes to soccer players. Soccer players prices are based on one thing more than anything: location, location, location—in this case, where they were born (or what country they decided to nationalize themselves in). Neymar is a great example of this. His performance as a player was impressive but him being Brazilian was what made him that much more valuable. South American players are a big commodity as well as European players, but there is hardly demand for players from Canada or even Russia.

Country of origin is not the only thing that defines a player’s value but there is also the factor of what club owns the player. Continuing with Neymar, he started his career off playing with Santos FC  in Brazil. If he had decided to continue there, his value as a player would not have been as significant. The level he had and the competition he played against also play into this as well (performance being the third factor). So when Barcelona FC (one of the top teams in the Spanish league) purchased him, his value as a player soared through the roof.

While Neymar’s stories is a “Cinderella story” that is continuously seen not just in soccer, but in sports in general, these factors are what create a giant gap between different nations and clubs. The role that the transfer market plays creates a hierarchy of clubs that will always be at the top of the table that the “poorer” clubs will never be able to catch up to. Note: it is important to mention that performance for clubs has nothing to do with the system per se. Even though Manchester United did horrible doing this season in the Premiere League, they are still one of the richest teams in the EPL and will continue to stay in that position.

Continuing with the Neymar example, there is no regulation on the amount of money that is being spent. This led to Barcelona sparking a media frenzy regarding the purchase of Neymar.

American Soccer Transfer Market

The transfer window for Major League Soccer (MLS) works a bit differently than Europe’s.

For one, MLS works as a close league and not the European open league. Players are not able to leave clubs when they please and to even the playing field more and avoid this gap of rich and poor clubs, there is a draft is held around the time of the two transfer windows that occur during mid-February and another that opens on July 8^th. Teams’ position in the draft is based on: their performance and what the standing was in the previous season.

As with other American sports, the highest pick goes to the worst performing team and the best teams find their slot at the very bottom. These teams draft in rounds, which goes from #1 to however many rounds indicated.

This allows for something that occurs in the MLS draft that does not appear in the European market at all—the role of trading draft picks. So, a team somewhere towards the bottom can trade their pick in the draft with a team that is a little higher up.

Another difference between the European transfer market and the MLS is the salary cap. As the MLS “Roster Rules and Regulations” states:

• Players occupying roster spots 1-20 count against the club’s 2014 salary budget of $3,100,000, and are referred to collectively as the club’s Salary Budget Players.
• Roster spots 19 and 20 are not required to be filled, and teams may spread their salary budget across only 18 Salary Budget Players.  A minimum salary budget charge will be imputed against a team’s salary budget for each unfilled senior roster slot below 18.
• The maximum budget charge for a single player is $387,500.*

* See section entitled Allocation Money below, under Player Acquisition Mechanisms, for details on buying down a player’s budget charge.

As one can see, there is a budget that is upheld within the MLS; there is accountability for each player and how much can go when it comes to salary. That is not seen in European (as is evidence with the large amount of money that soccer stars such as Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are paid).

The MLS looks to have a more even playing field and does so by regulating all aspects of the transfer window. This also helps to create greater competition for teams, regardless of how much money they have, because they have a better chance of obtaining a good player.

The Dilemma

The dilemma with the American transfer window is the role of politics. Players are not given as much freedom as there is in the European market when it comes to where and when players want to play. Though there is a disparity in income with European players, American players have very strict contracts with their teams that are often too expensive for any team to simply pay off to get that specific player.

As is noted:

• A Team may buy out one (1) guaranteed player (including a DP’s) contract during the off-season and free up the corresponding budget space. Such a buyout is at the particular MLS Team’s own expense.
• A Team may not free up budget space with a buyout of a player’s salary budget charge during the season. Such a buyout will be conducted by the League and count on a Club’s budget in a manner consistent with current MLS guidelines.

As with anything, is a very strict, orderly procedure that takes place for the buyout to even occur.

Nothing happens outside the transfer window that is not seriously examined for a long time.

Conclusion

Both the European and the American soccer transfer markets have their flaws. One seems to have a very free and open place that creates disparity while the other seems too strict to even try to mention the word “freedom.” What is important to note though is the simple question about the love of the game. The American soccer league is very strict about making sure they make a profit or do not spend any more than they have to  to avoid a deficit. However, what is important to note about the European market is this lack of salary cap that allows for people to waste so much without a worry; they simply do it for “the love of game.” Going back to Roman Abramovich and his purchase of Chelsea, economically it is seen as a bad investment. But from a pride standpoint, the investment was definitely worth it (it brought a Champions League Cup, two League Cups and two FA Cup wins).

So whether you enjoy soccer from an economic standpoint or for the love of the game, both have their flaws but both also have their benefits.

It’s quite funny how tuition has been able to resist the laws of physics within the past years of recession. Unlike the mortgage industry where it took a nice dive south in 2008, tuition has been able to resist this urge and continues its leap. In fact for public schools the annual increase has been 6.5% each year for the past decade. However certain policies both fiscal and monetary are out there, but how much do they even help?  If they don’t help at all I sure as heck would like to know of some alternative options to college that might provide more of a benefit in securing a financially secure future. While the public is told that colleges are a promising step to securing a financial future, the cost of tuition seems to act as a stump towards finishing the end of that promise. This stump hurts many aspects of society, mainly the middle class American dream. An important value that has become more demanded but less available to the public with some more than others.

After considering some numbers on this chart, it might seem that coming out of college in debt would most likely put the average college student few tens of thousands in debt and for some, many tens of thousands.

Considering that the average tuition for college graduates is around $45,000, it would seem that is very possible to manage the debts out of college. For loans taken after 2013, Obama’s new policy that fixes loan payments to 10% of monthly income will be able to ease the stress of paying back the loans. Unfortunately, this only covers federal loan debt, which is helpful considering that federal loans take up 90% of the student loan market. Yet, only around 1.5 million are even eligible to use President Obama’s “Pay as you Earn…” plan. This is because in order to qualify for the policy, a borrower must have an outstanding federal debt in comparison to their family size. This obviously helps the lower socio-economic borrowers, but this leaves a wide gap towards the rest of the “middle* (middle class is no longer middle class)” class borrowers –borrowers whom are actually the most worst off in terms of college loans. Because federal aid is limited to those who are in more well off financial situations, borrowers in this category must resort to private lenders, primarily like those of Sallie Mae.

Sallie Mae “also offers reduced monthly payments, extended repayment schedules, and likely some less-advertised hardship programs. In their letter to the CFPB, they also state that they are in favor of rehabilitation programs for private loans that can help borrowers recover from default.”

Yet after looking at the so many videos, blogs and comments , it’s obvious that Sallie Mae doesn’t have a practical way of helping borrowers. For that reason, it’s common to hear stories of loan debt from Sallie Mae being doubled and paying monthly rates of over 1500.

Tiffany, a borrower who has suffered the much too common problem comments,

“I’ve spoken to their reps many times and it seems they can never help or answer any of my questions. I asked them how much of what I do pay actually goes to the primary loan and how much goes to interest. that rep couldn’t answer me. Just said I don’t know and I’m sure your loans will go down. (they haven’t) they have actually almost doubled ($25,000) now ($45,000). I am now searching for outside help and hoping to get someone involved because it doesn’t seem right to do all these programs and the sum of the loan never [goes] down.”

Responses like these are all over loan assistance forums, blogs and YouTube.

What it comes down to is whether these loans are affordable to the borrower in a way that takes into consideration the most important factors of the economy. Is the borrower entering a sound financial market in the coming years? Will the economy shape up and provide enough quality jobs to sustain borrowers in their repayments? Are interest rates comparable to these factors?

Interest Payment
11.875% $197.92               $392.92 72 $33,753.19

Fixed Payment
12.375% $25.00 $414.73 96 $40,434.05

Deferred Payment
12.875% $0.00 $410.66 108 $44,185.09

These are all questions that answer themselves but have not been replied by the government or the institutions themselves. Obviously, with the current average salary of $45,000, repaying $30,000 would take over 15 years IF the income to ratio payment plan was available to use. One can only expect a borrower from Sallie Mae who is unable to use an income ratio payment plan to be in a much more difficult situation to say the least.This is the repayment plan for $20,000 loan. Why should a loan increase over double the amount when deferred? The deeper question is: Why would someone take out such a loan with the imposed risk of destroying oneself financially?

It’s about time that not only private lenders like Sallie Mae change their lending practices, but also borrowers become more responsible consumers by taking a stand against predatory lenders. But in reality this requires students to look towards other alternatives and sadly there are no real alternatives that provide such assistance. That means a lot of students would have to stop going to school and the future of college students would drastically drop in numbers.

Of course this adds the benefit of pushing for reform in creating alternatives to the whole post-secondary educational system, but the time that it would sacrifice would be much to dire for a single generation to make this move. Therefore, the only plausible solution would be for reform, like any sustainable reform, to happen slowly. This will act as yet another barrier to allowing current college debt holders from being able to pay their debts off.

If one was looking to find a solution in today’s market, one would have to focus on a career that is in demand and provides a secure return. Two of those jobs are nursing and teaching. Since baby boomers are now retiring a great number of those jobs are becoming increasingly in demand. These jobs even if requiring a large sum of debt are secure

This could create a major shift in the workforce where middle class Americans are fighting more for a secure workplace rather than their dream job. These attitudes already exist primarily in majors like pre-med, engineering and accounting but a severe shift into these jobs could create a problem of supply and demand in future generations. As of now, they remain as a credible option for securing a life as a middle class American and more importantly getting the bang for the buck.It’s unfortunate that the solution to the economic market requires overlooking the value of the educational institution and instead considering the conditions of the job market. It completely debases the goal of universities of spreading diversity, education and promising a future. Money is spread too far thin in America and economic security is only available in the holes in which it leaks. As nursing and teaching jobs are being widely pursued after, it is evident that more and more students are becoming aware of this fact.enough to pay off debts and provide a financially secure future.

Given that there are so many fields of careers in each of those industries that are increasing and decreasing at different paces, the prospect of the job market varies with holes that are both hidden and publicly evident. So looking for those things is important in order to really make a conscious decision in the future path of a post-secondary education. Within all these holes of mysteries and wonders the only way to really find a secure route towards careers, ones like public relations, journalism, business, philosophy etc. , institutions have to provide resources that cater to these fields –things like specific training and hands-on (internships) that give a more practical and applicable tool to the student.

The company, Coursera does this exact thing. Founded by Andrew NG, Coursera is a site that offers the “world’s best courses, for free.” This is an example of a tuition return at its finest. Free tuition and specific helpful resources. This helps employers as well as it locates them with specialized workers whose educational background can be used more accurately and in sync with what they are looking for. This also does tuition cost a service as an institution like Coursera has all the ability to compete with universities if they were to be recognized by employers. I hope sarcasm is ringing its bells, because a zero cost tuition could equate to a complete reform of the tuition market.

Naveed, an environmental engineer explains that Coursera is in a way

“recycling information within the educational system.”

Within all this commotion and episodic dialogue there is a piece of thought I hope to shed light on. The importance of college tuition has become emphasized more than ever in the past decade and yet it’s also the worst time to get one. Maybe in a couple years when alternative forms of education are properly institutionalized, one can expect to find a secure job without carrying a load of debt. As stated, this takes time and a lot of effort considering that colleges would not like to see their tuition costs diminish. But another important aspect to also consider is innovation. The great country of USA has been excelling in innovation, but education has yet to reap its benefits. But with technological advancements already taking place in companies like Coursera maybe one day Coursera might be referred to instead as an institution rather than a company or site.

An economy is only as good as the families that profit from it. And while, this may be the worst time in this article to get sensitive, protecting and nurturing families has always been the end goal of having a good economy. The economy should never discriminate against class, race or ethnicity but unfortunately that is not the case. With tuition costs expected to increase, society can only expect to continue redlining certain audiences of the public.

Certain audiences would fall under immigrants, minorities –first generation college students who are only beginning to transition into post-secondary system. The time is more important than ever for a revolution for integration to occur but that is difficult to do when private lenders like Sallie Mae thrive from these very people. There is obviously a lot of sewage that drains from college tuition, but the problems leak far deeper than publicly acknowledged and it is important time to begin looking into these matters.

Otherwise we are headed into a catastrophe that could yield devastating systemic blow to the educational system, financial system and government. Based on the history of America’s economic and political system, it’s now more than ever that the cost of education is hurting the economy more than ever.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

References

http://pnpi.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/program_pages/attachments/college%20published%20tuition%20and%20fees%20chart%20year.png

http://aspanational.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/collegestuition.jpg

http://xmiragestat.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/higher-education-increase.gif

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortium-of-colleges-takes-online-education-to-new-level.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.clearpointcreditcounselingsolutions.org/how-to-pay-off-private-student-loans-from-sallie-mae-and-other-lenders/

Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Co, paid $1.76 million for the bluefin tuna he had won at the Tsukiji Market auction in January last year. As his staff towed the prized tuna back to his restaurant, the cart carrying the giant fish was surrounded by groups of professional photographers. He posed for a photo before he cut the tuna, his employees clapping hands in the background.

The picture that ran next to headlines about the eye-popping price tag for a single bluefin tuna is a snapshot of a lucrative industry spinning out of control due to a decade of overfishing under lax regulation.

Fed by ravenous demand from sushi lovers, Japanese and European fleets have exploited the commercial value of bluefin tuna and nearly depleted its stock in the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean.

“The stock of bluefin tuna, by far the most valued tuna species, has been so heavily overfished in recent times that its collapse has become a very serious and threatening possibility,” said Fabio Hazin, chairman of The International Commission of the Conservation of the Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), at a meeting in 2008.

Days after Kimura bought his tuna, the Pew Charitable Trusts announced the number of Pacific bluefin tuna has declined by 96.4 percent from pre-1950 levels. The eastern Atlantic bluefin spawning stock has plummeted by nearly 75 percent over the past four decades, according to reports from ICCAT, a Madrid-based regulatory body with 47 members and the European Union.

Half of that loss, says ICCAT, occurred between 1997 and 2007, a period commonly known as “the golden years” among European fishermen. When the market for bluefin tuna took off in the 1980s, the advent of ranches — large coastal pens for fattening the fish before trading them with the Japanese — transformed the economic outlook of the industry. During the two decades followed, European ranchers and Japanese conglomerates worked together to take advantage of a lack of regulatory oversight. They caught as many as they wanted, and rested assured that state government would take whatever catch number they report for granted. The French government helped expand their fleets with subsidy, only to fuel a black market where trading unreported catch has become an international routine.

From Nobody to Somebody

Bluefin tuna has very few natural predators, but the species paid a price for becoming one of the most sought-after fish among well-heeled sushi devotees in Japan and worldwide.

In the 1960s, bluefin sold for a tiny fraction of its market price today. It was mostly ground up for cat food in the U.S., and dish made out of its meat held little appeal to the Japanese who preferred white-fleshed fish and shellfish. There were plenty of stock of bluefin around the northwestern corner of America, but commercial fishers considered it a trash commodity and passed it on to be the targets of weekend sportsmen.

The turning point came when sushi bars went global in the next ten years: Americans turned out to have an appetite for “toro,” the fatty underbelly of tuna commonly used for sushi. In Japan, people had grown accustomed to meat with strong flavors and dark flesh. It was also about this time that Japanese cargo planes, after delivering electronics to the U.S. market, started buying up cheap bluefin tuna near New England to sell them at a good price back home.

By the 1970s, bluefin tuna had caught on in Japan, prompting the nation’s importers to take in large quantities from fisheries worldwide. Fishing for bluefin in the western Atlantic increased by more than 2,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The average price paid to Atlantic fishermen for bluefin exported to Japan exploded by 10,000 percent.

Today, Japan consumes about 80 percent of the bluefin tuna caught globally. The country is home to the Tsukiji fish market, the world’s largest seafood wholesale center. There, the annual fish auction held on the first Saturday in January demonstrates how much hype there is around bluefin tuna. For patrons of the auction, winning the head of a single bluefin tuna at an outrageous price is a fight for status and free advertising. Kimura, who became widely known after he paid $1.7 million last year, also won the bid this year and in 2012.

The auction price, as shown above, has soared since 2008, before taking a nosedive early this year. “The wildly fluctuating price demonstrates only that the auction is subjective and distorted, dictated almost entirely by the bidders’ wealth and whims,” writes Emma Bryce, a reporter with The Guardian.

Ranching to the Utmost

During the golden age for catching bluefin tuna Japan’s demand turned several family businesses in France into fishing empires. But it was the advent of “ranching,” the industrial method of fattening bluefin in underwater pens before selling them on the market, that facilitated the ruthless catch, particularly in the Mediterranean Sea.

Originated in Australia, tuna ranches were introduced by Spanish and Croatian fishermen to the Mediterranean area around 1998, the same period when ICCAT instituted the first quota on bluefin tuna. The old-fashioned way was to catch the bluefin near the shore and kill them immediately before returning them to the port. The advanced method is much more complicated: Purse seiners transfer the catch to cages; Tugboats slowly carry the cages — for as long as a month — to circular underwater pens located in coastal waters; Fish in the ranches are then fattened for months on sardine, mackerel, and herring till their fat content, flavor and color match the demand of Japanese consumers. Tunas at harvest are shot in the head and kept cool in cold seawater slush; In the end, most of the fish are shipped deep-frozen to Japan on refrigerated vessels, while the rest are packaged and flown to Japanese markets, where they’d be auctioned off fresh. See a video on how ranching works below:

Those circular ranches revolutionized the industry. Fishermen were able to steer their vessels father from the port without worrying the fish caught would rot on their way back to the port. The deeper the water, the larger the bluefin, and the bigger the profit.

“What you gain is consistency in the quality and the supply, because you are not subject to seasonal factors,” says Rex Ito, president of Prime Time Seafood, a Los Angeles-based importer that provides 85 percent of the bluefin tuna needed in L.A. restaurants. “It’s an efficient way of producing a quality product.”

Earlier, the supply of fresh bluefin could only last for a few months per year, with just a tiny percentage of the catch being fat enough. The introduction of ranches means fishermen in his greatest capacity, and hold on to his stock till Japanese traders are ready to deal. For connoisseurs, a stable supply enables bluefin tuna to be on the menu year-around.

Tuna ranches, says Ito, is what gave rise to increased fishing capacity and over-catching. His biggest suppliers are located in Spain and Mexico, where bluefin tuna are ranched and sold to sushi bars in the U.S.

Compared to Spain’s long tradition in the bluefin business, Mexico is new in the game. The country, which now catches the majority of bluefin in the eastern Pacific Ocean, adopted the ranching technology around 2000.

“You wouldn’t necessarily save money by keeping the tuna in a cage and feed it. The process is actually fairly expensive. It’s quite an operation,” says Ito. “But farming or ranching is the future of a lot of seafood.”

In Europe, ranching has helped French fisheries strike a fortune between 1997 and 2007, depleting the stock of bluefin in eastern Atlantic Ocean by half, according to an investigative report from The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a global network of 185 investigative reporters.

In Sète, a small trip nestled along the Mediterranean Sea, bluefin fishing has been a regional vocation for generations of captains. But it was the rise of bluefin and the technique of ranching that made them one of the wealthiest fishermen communities in France. They now operate the world’s most productive tuna fishing fleet, of which 36 multimillion-euro vessels target bluefin tuna in the eastern Atalantic Ocean.

Government subsidies played a significant role in the renovation and expansion of Europe’s powerful fishing fleets. The European Union and its member states, encouraged by a strong market demand for bluefin tuna, has poured €26.5 million into vessels in Sète between 1993 and 2007. The average French purse seiner in 1998 was twice as long and four times as powerful as they were two decades ago. By 2008, there were 131 purse seiners in EU fleet, and another 500 ships owned by ICCAT members outside the EU. All of them served the cause of exploiting the bluefin community. For owners who took out bank loans to purchase their pricey vessels, the only way to repay the debt was to over catch.

Japanese companies, even though at the very end of the supply chain, chipped in with money. They are known as “the architects and financiers of the ranching industry,” because they partnered with Spanish and Croatian fisheries in building and running the facilities. Paco Fuentes, a business mogul from Spain, jointly ownes Drvenik Tuna, a Croatian ranch, with Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi and local partner Conex Trade. The man also serves as the general manager of Fuentes & Sons, which has eight ranching subsidiaries in six countries. When interviewed on the dire state of bluefin tuna, Fuentes said he didn’t consider it “an endangered species.”

“There are a lot of small bluefin tunas in the Gulf of Lion waters [near France],” he told ICIJ reporters.

Fish Till You Drop, Authorities Say

Tuna ranches inspired fishermen to maximize the economic benefit of bluefin tuna, and brought sushi lovers a sufficient supply of toro meat. But when the feeding frenzy went unchecked, it became gateway to a decade-long, illegal fishing craze in the Mediterranean.

Seventy-five percent of the region’s bluefin tuna stock had disappeared between 1998 and 2007, says ICCAT. During the same decade, off-the-book trade in bluefin market is estimated to be $400 million per year, says ICIJ reports. One out of every three bluefin was illegally caught, and a majority of them were young fish that have not yet reproduced. In 2008, the amount of eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna traded on the global market was still 31 percent larger than ICCAT’s quota that year. In 2010, the gap peaked at 141 percent.Ranching made it difficult to track the number of bluefin caught mainly because much of its operation is done underwater. Raising undersized fish may hardly be noticed when ranchers cleverly place them in a good adult mix; Fleets could transfer the fish immediately to another vessel without declaring the catch; A diver can simply stops videotaping and allows the fish to pass unrecorded when transferring them from net to cage, thus falsifying the catch number.

Unreported and illegal catches were fueled by a lack of accountability. One French fisherman named Nicolas Giordano told ICIJ that he and his peers declared freely their catch number until 2006 to the laissez-faire French government. “The administration didn’t do its job, and at the time no one took it seriously,” he says.

Until 2007, the French officials never bothered to verify the numbers reported, neither did the Spanish and Italian governments. They adjusted the figure further downward to meet the quota and then sent it to the European Commission, which in turn reported to ICCAT.

“The only country to give their real figures would get fined, so in that kind of game, everyone lies,” ICCAT scientist Jean-Marc Fromentin told ICIJ reporters.

In 2008, ICCAT introduced Bluefin Tuna Catch Documents, a paper-based catch documentation system aimed at tracking down every step of the bluefin trade along the supply chain. But only a handful of countries, mostly big players, have updated their documents since 2014. In response, ICCAT has put forward an electronic catch documentation system to counter the rampant black market.

Forging Ahead

Fuentes & Sons, now a leading seafood supplier in Spain, announced in December its plans to become the first to raise Atlantic bluefin tuna on land. The company would invest €5 million in building a hatchery for the endangered fish, with the expectation of producing about 500 metric tons by 2015.

Japan’s Fisheries Agency, on the other hand, has decided to rein in the nation’s catch of immature Pacific bluefin tuna. Starting in 2015, it would reduce by half the quota of bluefin tuna that are three years old or younger compared to the average catch number during 2002 and 2004.

The biggest market for bluefin has seen its officials turn down several batches of dubious bluefin imports in the past few years, but a moratorium on fishing bluefin seems unlikely given its popularity and economic value.

“They wanted the fatty fish and they recruited the people who could carry out this work for them. Now that the system is out of control and markets are saturated, they are scrambling to distance themselves from it,” said Sergi Tudela, head of Fisheries at WWF Mediterranean.

Reference:
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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/world-on-a-plate/2014/jan/06/pacific-bluefin-tuna-auction-overfishing-sushi
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-09/tuna-species-sold-at-record-price-faces-overfishing-study-says.html
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