Britain joins forces with France to press for global ban on sale of bluefin Britain is to join France lobbying governments around the world for an international ban on the sale of the bluefin tuna, which is on the brink of extinction after years of over-fishing. The fisheries minister Huw Irranca-Davies told The Independent the UK would back and seek support in Washington and other international capitals for a proposal to ban the fish at CITES (the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species). France, which has a bigger bluefin fishing fleet than anyone else, also announced it would back a CITES ban, bringing a real prospect that the fish – which will be wiped out in the Mediterranean by 2012, according to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) – may be saved.