TOKYO - An international body that monitors fisheries in most of the Pacific Ocean ended a meeting in Japan on Thursday without agreement on fresh measures to protect the dwindling bluefin tuna.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission was unable to get a consensus on either short-term or long-term measures to help restore the bluefin population. Bluefin numbers are estimated to have fallen 96 per cent from unfished levels, according to a release by the group.

Last year, the commission recommended that the catch of juvenile tuna be cut to half of its average level in 2002-2004. But conservation groups say more must be done to counter the sharp decline of the species.

Further inaction would likely prompt efforts by conservationists to get Pacific bluefin tuna banned from international trading, said a statement by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which is working to save the species.

"Unfortunately, the only outcome of this week's meeting is a guarantee that the Pacific bluefin tuna population will decline even further because of the continued inaction of ten governments responsible for the management of this species," Amanda Nickson, director of global tuna conservation for the group.

"The international community may be forced to look at a global trade ban to help save this species," she said in a statement.

The fisheries group did not agree to a request by researchers to study the results of stricter fisheries management during their four-day meeting in the northern city of Sapporo.

Japanese eat 80 per cent 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.

Most of the fish caught are juveniles that have not had a chance to reproduce. The species could recover relatively quickly, however, since they are highly productive, spawning millions of eggs a year.

A stock assessment by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the Northern Pacific Ocean found the levels of bluefin in 2012 at near their lowest ever of just 4 per cent of original stocks.