The following is a guest essay from Carl Safina, the oceans' most articulate defender and director of the Orion Grassroots Network member group Blue Ocean Institute. His books include Song for the Blue Ocean, Eye of the Albatross, and Voyage of the Turtle. His blog also is a must-read.
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The story goes like this: It's one of the largest, fastest, most gorgeous fish in the sea. Unfortunately, its extraordinary warm-bloodedness makes its muscle delicious to the strange seafood-loving creatures that live on land. The value of bluefin tuna meat goes up due to global demand for sushi and sashimi. As the price goes up, fishing increases. Too many fish are caught and the population collapses. Over the past 50 years, bluefin fisheries have collapsed off Brazil, in the North Sea, and recently off the eastern U.S. and Canada.
The Commission tasked with managing Atlantic bluefin fisheries is completely broken. The 43-nation International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas met this month in, appropriately enough, Turkey, to discuss the fate of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic. Usually referred to by its acronym ICCAT -- pronounced eye-cat -- it should be called instead ICCAN'T. Or, keep the acronym and change its name to International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna.
The same can be said for the fishers themselves, who, when it comes to bluefin tuna are represented by ideologues incapable of understanding that collapse is bad for business. They lobby the Commissioners very hard, and on the other end Japan, the main market for bluefin, does everything possible to keep quotas high and the science be damned. So the Commission itself is an odd cross between a fishermen's pit-bull and Japanese lap-dog. Last year, U.S. fishermen caught only 10 percent of their quota. By any measure, they're going out of business. Because they consistently refused to discuss cutting their quota for the sake of conservation and their own future, their greed is bankrupting them.
What have they and the commissioners learned from the collapses? Apparently, nothing at all. In fact, in their 40-year history, they have never once managed a fish population sustainably or allowed a recovery. All the fish species under their "authority" are at historic lows, with one exception: the North Atlantic Swordfish. But it took a chef's boycott and a successful lawsuit to arrest and turn around that fish's plummet.
The largest remaining Atlantic bluefin population -- which breeds in the Mediterranean -- is now also endangered with collapse. The quota for fishing in the east half of the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean is more than double what the Commission's own scientists recommend. Moreover, recent catches have exceeded the limit by more than 50 percent. Actual catches are about 230 percent higher than scientists recommend, meaning that for every one fish that can be sustainably caught, fishermen are killing more than three. The population has halved since the 1970s, with most of the decline occurring in the last five to six years. It's the familiar bluefin story: Illegal fishing is rampant, too many fish are being caught, and the population is headed for collapse.
At the recent Commission meeting, the United States and Canada proposed a three-year moratorium on bluefin fishing for eastern Atlantic fishing countries -- i.e., exempting themselves -- to allow member nations time to control illegal fishing and incorporate scientific recommendations. The proposal was quickly rejected. Despite obvious overfishing and decline, Commission delegates actually raised the quota slightly.
Nothing meaningful -- at least nothing good -- is ever done for bluefin tuna by ICCAN'T. Never mind that the Commission's own scientists have found that reducing catches and rebuilding the population could lead to substantially higher quotas in as few as 10 years.
Archaeological evidence shows that people have been fishing bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean for at least 9,000 years. A three-year break is not too much to ask to ensure that bluefin are around for the next 9,000.
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Comments
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caniscandida Posted 6:33 am
27 Nov 2007
People in boats at sea, doing whatever they are up to, not just fishing, are historically notoriously difficult to regulate. So while ICCAT may indeed be feckless and corrupt, that should come as no surprise.
What is truly frightening, regarding the fate of Atlantic bluefin tunas, is how endangered they are by the perfect storm of global demand and super-efficient methods of extraction and marketing, on top of the age-old problem of the impossibility to enforce regulations.
Is there hope, realistically, for a reduction in demand? Has any pro-fish sentiment of consumers, chefs and restaurant-owners really been responsible for relieving the plight of swordfish, or Patagonian toothfish, or sharks? It would be very useful to know what kinds of conservation models may have worked in the past.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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Sam Wells Posted 7:57 am
27 Nov 2007
There are a few bluefin tuna left in the Atlantic and Pacific but as noted, most today are off Spain, Africa, and inside the Med. And they're running out of them very quickly. They dang sure ain't off the US coast.
Many sushi/sashimi joints are now substituting with other fish such as yellowfin tuna, mackerel, and other common species (I love yellowfin myself and it is not endangered). If you want to pay ten or twenty bucks for a match-book sized piece of bluefin, go ahead while it lasts.
I repeat my claims made in another post that Italy, France, and Spain should be sanctioned for their wholesale slaughter of bluefin.
Onward through the fog
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lorna salzman Posted 8:02 am
28 Nov 2007
Lorna Salzman
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Sam Wells Posted 9:00 am
28 Nov 2007
The ICCAT will now simply enforce existing rules, which are largely unenforced outside their territorial waters. One of the biggest threats are from African countries that allow European boats to fish, whilst paying tariffs and fees. Not only do these factory long-line and trawl ships take in many blue tuna, they catch shark almost ten to one. Birds and turtles are also a significant part of the "by-catch."
Some of the stories from EU fisheries observers were truly horrifying. One observer was forced to club 100 sharks to death before they let him have dinner.
Onward through the fog
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Carl Safina Posted 2:07 am
29 Nov 2007
- Carl Safina
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Carl Safina Posted 2:08 am
29 Nov 2007
- Carl Safina
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amc89 Posted 3:08 am
29 Nov 2007
On another topic, another marine issue where consumers are making a difference is the Canada seal hunt. The best way to help end commercial seal hunting is to of course boycott seal fur, but another way to help, especially for those in the U.S. where the sale and importation of all seal products is banned under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, is to boycott Canadian seafood like Canadian snow crabs, since it is the Canadian fishing industry that is behind the commerical seal hunt. Thousands of restaurants and chefs have pledged to reduce or end their sale of Canadian seafood, as well as dozens of seafood suppliers, casinos and supermarket chains. Since the start of the boycott, Canadian government trade statistics reveal that Canadian exports of snow crabs to the United States have dropped by over $350 million, putting even more pressure on the Canadian fishing industry to stop its support for the seal slaughter.
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caniscandida Posted 5:25 am
29 Nov 2007
you are absolutely right that the NY Times comes across as basically a consumerist pro-business organ. Its coverage of such subjects as food, travel destinations and automobiles regularly is intended to promote consumption, with never an ethical question asked. Or, if persons with ethical objections are quoted, they are implicitly treated as denizens of the wild, lunatic borderlands.
And, to be fair, the NYT is hardly the only MSM vehicle that does that.
Carl and AMC,
I believe you, about the effectiveness of consumer pressure, but wish I had more evidence.
E.g., is the boycott of Canadian snow crabs and other seafood actually causing Canadian fishers and their promoters in government to rethink their commitment to that horrifying slaughter of juvenile seals that they perpetrate every year? That is hardly apparent.
And, while the Japanese owners of a big seafood distributer in New England pulled out of supporting Japanese whaling as the result of a boycott by US consumers of seafood (or so I am given to understand), has that had any negative effect on the slaughter of cetaceans perpetrated by Japanese? I do not think so.
As for specifically Japanese demand for bluefin sushi driving up the price of bluefin meat, it would be interesting to know how "traditional" this appetite of theirs is, and whether the bluefin-related concerns of conservationists are being treated as offensive anti-Japanese attacks mounted by racist elites in the West, along the lines of how cetacean slaughter is being defended.
It is noteworthy that the peoples of the Levantine coast, the Aegean region, Sicily, the Bay of Naples, Provence, Catalunya and elsewhere in the Mediterranean have been fishing for bluefin tunas, and just about everything else, for a very long time, as Carl Safina points out. So bluefin-fishing is certainly part of their "tradition." But equally traditional is their extremely varied seafood cuisine, in which tunas are not presented as exclusively desirable.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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Erik Hoffner Posted 5:10 am
30 Nov 2007
While I'm willing to bet that tuna were traditionally hunted by the Japanese, the zeal for killing whales for food is much less likely to be rooted that deeply. Carl's got a devastating indictment of that practice, which they persist at, even though whale meat is unpopular in Japan. The official line is that "whales are no more intelligent or special than cows, their expanding numbers are depleting fisheries needed by humans, and any complaints about killing them are hypocritical and little more than cultural imperialism." Full post here:
http://carlsafina.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/more-of-japans ...
Erik
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