In an interview with the New York Times, Japan’s top fisheries negotiator said that the country will not stop fishing bluefin tuna even though the fish is under the United Nations treaty on endangered species.

“It’s a pity,” Masanori Miyahara said, “but it’s a matter of principle.”

Japan, which consumes about 80 percent of the bluefin tuna caught in the Mediterranean, “is very simple,” Mr. Miyahara said. He said Japan believed that a different organization, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, known as Iccat, should manage bluefin tuna catches and protection.

Miyahara went on to say that although Japan acknowledged that the bluefin tuna needed protection, the endangered-species convention was “quite inflexible.” 

“We don’t believe the bluefin tuna is endangered to that extent,” he said.