Aug 31 2009
New Push to Save Bluefin Tuna From Extinction
International pressure is mounting to ban sale of decimated bluefin tuna populations. This mighty animal has been overfished by legal and pirate fishermen to near extinction, and far too little has been done to protect it. Scientists predict it could disappear from some fishing grounds in as little as a decade. The World Wildlife Fund forecasts that breeding stocks of the fish that migrate from the Atlantic to spawn will be gone in the Mediterranean by 2012. (Above: by Marine Fish Conservation Network, www.conservefish.org)
THE OVERFISHING
Bluefin remains the centerpiece of sushi and sashimi in both Japan and the United States, and this demand is driving bluefin overfishing. Renowned sushi chef Nobu Matsuhisa, for one, says he fears sushi gourmets would not patronize his 24 equally renowned Nobu restaurants around the world if he were to 86 Atlantic bluefin from his menus, and so it remains there.
In the Mediterranean, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas set a fishing quota of 22,000 tonnes for this year, 50 percent more than the ICCAT’s own scientists warned is prudent. Greenpeace termed ICCAT’s decision “disastrous and shameful.” Illegal, or pirate fishing, could boost this figure by 30 to 50 percent, based on bluefin catch figures for 2008. Spain is “the biggest tuna-fishing country,” according to the BBC, and the Spanish-owned and flagged Albatun Tres, known as a “super, super” purse seiner with sprawling nets that can scoop up 3,000 tons of tuna in a single trip, is the largest tuna fishing vessel in the world.
The U.S. government, despite a President’s Initiative to produce an ocean policy for sustainable use and protection of the oceans, coasts and Great Lakes, is proposing to increase the bluefin catch of commercial long-line fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico. But the Gulf is the only known spawning area for bluetin tuna in the western Atlantic Ocean, and the bluefin tuna population there is at its lowest levels on record, according to the Marine Fish Conservation Network.
In June, the UK’s Independent newspaper reported that Japan’s Mitsubishi conglomerate has cornered 40 percent of the global bluefin market, even though company officials acknowledge bluefin is being overfished. Mitsubishi is importing Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin, then reportedly freezing it at -60 degrees Celsius to sell it in a few years for superpremium prices once the fish is commercially extinct. The company, however, counters that it freezes the fish to tide over sales between fishing cycles.
THE RESCUE ATTEMPTS
Since this spring, there has been a spate of last-ditch efforts to save bluefin from overfishing and recalcitrant sushi purveyors.
Celebrities like Sting and Charlize Theron banded together in May to protest bluefin consumption, the Christian Science Monitor reported. In June, Monaco’s Prince Albert promised to list Atlantic bluefin as an endangered species. In July, France, then Britain pledged to do the same. And in August, a former Japanese fisheries minister declared that the Japanese ought to be putting a lot less bluefin on their plates. At the same time, new sustainable sushi chefs have been returning to the origins of sushi before tuna, once considered a “garbage” fish, took the place of abundant species indigenous to Japanese waters.
On Aug. 22, the European Union said it will decide in the fall whether bluefin tuna should be added to its list of threatened species. This would be in preparation for the March 2010 meeting in Qatar of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). A ban there would result in a ban of bluefin sales on international markets. Local markets would be free to do as they please.
A ban, if effective, would likely mean the sushi and sashimi purveyors of the world will have to find a replacement for bluefin. And bluefin tuna might have a chance at survival.
