Bluefin Thursday, Red and Pink Coral Sunday

So we now know, if the chairman of the CITES Committee I is to be believed (and he is doing a very good job so no reason not to), bluefin tuna will come up for initial discussion on Thursday, and red and pink coral will be discussed on Sunday (Friday and Saturday is the weekend here, folks). This is good, because yours truly was thinking that coral might come up today and I would like more time to have some good chats with delegates about why trade protection for red and pink coral is necessary (someone in the CITES Secretariat told a member of the U.S. delegation that the Coralliidae proposal was the best one he'd ever seen).

In other news, a very uncontroversial sharks resolution (more monitoring, review of taxonomy, encouragement of national plans of action for shark fisheries - all good, sensible stuff, RIGHT?) did not pass - and only around 98 countries were actually in the room to vote. There are a 175 countries party to CITES. This means that there is a ways to go before any marine species proposal is actually in the clear....