News of the latest negotiations on how many bluefin tuna the world can afford to kill without extinctionating the species (yes, it's a word ... to me) is yet to be inked, and that's fine, because it's always such a depressing story. Who us, kill too many of a disappearing fish? But it reminded me of the new book by Richard Ellis, Tuna: A Love Story, which is great in many respects in part because in it he declares that we need to save this species precisely because it's a phenomenal animal. Warm blooded, acrobatic, long-lived, and wily, it's a miracle of evolution.
Yet every year more of these creatures are netted while small, kept captive in oceanic pens (so called "ranches") in places like South Australia, and fattened until they're just right for the sushi market. While this perhaps takes some pressure off still-wild tuna, the world's appetite for bluefin is so great that I think it only adds more fuel to the fire. Which is one reason why the recent breakthrough by an Australian for-profit, Clean Seas, who has coerced captive bluefin to breed in the lab, therefore opening the door to an endless supply of new ranch recruits, is more disturbing to me than hopeful. The company's creepy statement about it doesn't help:
"We have proven what can be done, even with southern bluefin tuna, which is the holy grail (of aquaculture)," Mr Stehr said.
"In the future this will be a staggering industry of immense proportions. It depends on us, the state government, the federal Government, how big we want this to be.
"In years to come this will give us a sustainable bluefin industry, that no one in the world will be able to attack."
Wow. Today, bluefin tuna, tomorrow, the world! And what does that last bit mean, exactly, that no one will be able to assault their fish farms?
The company's name is magnificently ironic, and -- this is the main reason I'm driving at -- this is not a "holy grail" for at least the global commons. What are they going to feed these legions of domesticated tuna with, for years and years until they're "ripe"? Mindblowing amounts of small- to medium-sized fish, all caught at sea for the express purpose of fattening bluefins, one of the world's largest predators. Hence the irony: Clean Seas, cleansing the oceans of the very forage fish capable of sustaining any wild bluefins (and myriad other critters) that remain beyond pen, net, and rope.
Hoovering up the foodchain for fresh sushi makes very little sense except profit-motive-wise. But even folks like Richard Ellis miss this important point when he fails to look down the feed-line and instead hails this development in his book as something that has perhaps arrived "in time to rescue the Mediterranean bluefins from the rapacious overfishing by the Europeans."
Not in my book.
David de Rothschild: Saving the world, one adventure at a time
Comments
View as Flat
josullivan58 Posted 8:01 am
19 Nov 2008
Just eat lower on the food chain
Ranched tuna is like clean coal and light cigarettes. They're all bad.
Permalink
Sam Wells Posted 11:23 am
19 Nov 2008
Agreed
The NMFS has or had big plans for farming all kinds of fish including tuna, such as in huge cages anchored off the coastline of the US. It really doesn't work except as for holding pens, like how they process industrial cattle. The largest holding pens are in the Mediterranean Sea actually, and there are none in the US yet.
What was done to the blue fin tuna was despicable and beyond comprehension. The US has at least tried to limit catches and prohibit catches in the breeding grounds of the Gulf of Mexico. I cannot say that for any other foreign country, as far as conservation.
Those creative Australians of course want recognition for the "holy grail" of wild reproduction, breeding blue fin tuna. It is an interesting breakthrough, like mapping the DNA of the Tasmanian Devil. But for commercial applications or as a solution to conservation, it totally sucks. -sammie
Onward through the fog
Permalink
Pangolin Posted 8:30 pm
19 Nov 2008
Head banging idiocy
Didn't wild bluefin evolve over millions of years the ability to migrate to where the little fish are, eat them, and then become big fish. All without an ounce of human assistance.
Now, due to the age of cheap fuel, tuna stocks are declining. With the cheap fuel age over we are using fuel to go catch food for the tuna, freeze it, then transport it to captive fish. This is supposed to be preferable to simply setting fishing quotas that will allow stocks to grow and enforcing them.
What part of "sustainable" includes the massive burning of fossil fuels to farm fish? That can't be sustainable for long.
Put the Carbon Back
Permalink
suzannah Posted 1:10 am
20 Nov 2008
ranching = even worse overfishing
Not to mention pollution from fish waste destroying ocean floor habitats, cramped conditions leading to disease, escaped fish that compete and interbreed with wild fish, rampant antibiotic use leading to increased bacteria resistance ... the list goes on.
I haven't yet read Ellis' book, but I'll be very disappointed if he really believes that ranching is a viable answer in any way. That is a crucial misunderstanding of the issue on his part.
Oceana: Protecting the world's oceans.
Permalink
suzannah Posted 1:16 am
20 Nov 2008
and....
As it takes up to 10 pounds of wild fish to create one pound of farmed salmon, imagine how much wild fish it'll take to fatten the much larger, more robust bluefin tunas.
Oceana: Protecting the world's oceans.
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 1:32 am
20 Nov 2008
Clean Seas
"I'll be very disappointed if he really believes that ranching is a viable answer in any way."
Unfortunately, Ellis seems to take a little too much heart from the Clean Seas announcement, also evident later in this interview he did on Food Chain radio recently, "Show #601: BLUEFIN: COCAINE OF THE SEAS"
http://www.foodchainradio.com/shows/601BAbluefin.mp3
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 2:02 am
20 Nov 2008
Sushi is for losers ...
...too clueless to realize that the consumption of wildlife (ocean fish in this case) is tantamount to eating buffalo tongues and passenger pigeon pie at the turn of the century. Spread the meme.
The analogy is when humanity penned and domesticated wild cattle and sheep. Essentially we are starting to turn the wild oceans (think buffalo on the wild plains) into grazing lands with domesticated animals jammed into feedlots awaiting slaughter.
Penned tuna will rapidly evolve into a domesticated farm animal. The only thing that will be roaming the oceans will be the fish equivalent of cows.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 2:20 am
20 Nov 2008
Ellis's blind spot is surprising
It is surprising that someone with as keen an interest in preserving biodiversity as Richard Ellis would make such a grave oversight.
The rather skimpy Wikipedia article suggests that he has studied biodiversity-related issues for some time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ellis_(biologist)
A number of years ago, I heard him lecture at the American Museum of Natural History, on the subject of Mesozoic marine reptiles (e.g. ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs), in connexion with his book "Sea Dragons." And I corresponded with him a couple of times on subjects in paleontology and evolutionary biology. He strikes me as learned, affable, friendly, entertaining, and engaging.
On the other hand, I know nothing about what name he may have among environmentalists of the school of E.O. Wilson.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 3:07 am
20 Nov 2008
oversights
Biodiversivist, you go a little far there in your critique of those who eat from the ocean. As someone who catches and eats a dozen (or more, if I can manage it) striped bass and bluefish every year from the Atlantic, my sense is that these healthy populations can take some minor weeding from myself. And there are other sustaining populations of ocean critters, too, as you well know. Don't paint too broadly with your meme.
Canis: yes, his coffee table book on whales in the 70s I read over and over. A classic, and the illustrations are so beautiful. His last book, The Empty Ocean, seemed more hip to food chain issues, too.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more
Permalink