conference in Spain last week.

Japanese long-line fishermen have agreed to tag and release any blue or white marlin that are alive when they pull their lines, Agriculture and Fisheries director Mr. John Barnes told The Royal Gazette yesterday.

It is estimated that will return another 5,000 to 6,000 tagged marlin a year to the ocean, Mr. Barnes said.

"From a sports fishing point of view, that's really beneficial,'' he said.

"I think people are starting to realise a dead marlin is maybe worth 100 bucks, while a live one is worth thousands in recreation and tourism.'' Mr. Barnes is on a week's holiday in London after representing Bermuda as an observer at the annual meeting of the International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna in Madrid.

Bermuda has applied through the United Kingdom to join ICCAT, wishing to assure it gets a share of new quotas expected to be imposed on a wide range of fish species over the next several years.

At the two-week conference which wrapped up on Friday, a swordfish quota to take effect in the new year was added to the existing quota on blue fin tuna, Mr. Barnes said.

But the blue fin tuna quota was raised in response to a new American study that showed Atlantic stocks of the fish were larger than officials had believed.

The ICCAT session was considered "a landmark meeting'' by American and Canadian officials, because measures were agreed to that create the potential for trade sanctions against countries that violate fish management measures, Mr. Barnes said.

"It's definitely the shape of things to come,'' he said. And, "if you're not a member, you're not going to be able to fish''.

It was "only a matter of time'' before quotas were imposed for other species like wahoo and albacore, Mr. Barnes said. "If you're there at the table when they divvy it up, you get a piece. If you're not, you're left out.'' How and when Bermuda will join ICCAT is not yet known. It is believed the UK will join, in which case dependent territories like Bermuda could have the UK's membership extended to them. But the European Union, which would take in the UK, is also in the process of joining. Problems are foreseen in dividing quotas among member countries of the EU, as well as among dependent territories of the UK.

Mr. Barnes said pressure is growing on the Taiwanese, who are not members of the United Nations or ICCAT and are seen as the "bad boys'' of the fishing world. Japan, the only market for blue fin tuna, will now not buy the fish without documentation showing it was caught in a controlled fishery. Bermuda is able to issue such documents for fish caught in its waters, he said.

It is not yet known what foreign fishing vessels will be licensed to fish Bermuda waters in 1995.