Pacific tuna cutbacks 'fall short of expectations'

The outcome of the meeting also drew an angry reaction from the Pew Environment Group.

Pew's director of tuna conservation, Amanda Nickson, accused the commission of being "unable to agree or deliver on its core business to protect important tuna species such as bigeye and Pacific Bluefin from overfishing."

The Cairns meeting came a week after the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) rejected pressure to increase quotas for bluefin tuna in the East Atlantic and Mediterranean.

After marathon talks, the ICCAT concluded that the annual quotas would remain at 13,400 tonnes in the eastern Atlantic and 1,750 tonnes in the western Atlantic.