FISHERIES TO CUT CATCH OF ENDANGERED BLUEFIN TUNA

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FILE - In this Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014 file photo, customers take sushi of a bluefin tuna which was bought by sushi restauranteur Kiyoshi Kimura at the year's celebratory first auction, at his restaurant near Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. The multi-nation fisheries body that monitors most of the Pacific Ocean has agreed to cut the catch of juvenile bluefin tuna to half of its average level in 2002-2004. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

TOKYO (AP) -- The multi-nation fisheries body that monitors most of the Pacific Ocean has recommended a substantial cut to the catch of juvenile bluefin tuna, a move conservationists say is only an initial step toward saving the dwindling species.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission announced the decision Thursday after meeting in Fukuoka, a city in western Japan. It said the catch should be cut to half of its average level in 2002-2004.

The commission, a grouping of more than 20 nations that monitors the western two-thirds of the Pacific, also endorsed catch limits for adult bluefin and set a 10-year target of rebuilding the population to 8 percent of its original size.

Japanese eat 80 percent of the world's bluefin tuna, or "hon maguro," a sushi mainstay, and demand elsewhere in the world has kept growing. At a ritual new year auction, the top price for the fish jumped to about $7,000 a kilogram in 2013 but was a more reasonable $300 per kilogram this year.