Photo by adulau/Flickr CC
Should bluefin disappear, much of the blame should go to an organization called the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), although Carl Safina of the Blue Ocean Institute gave what some consider a more appropriate name, the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna. There are now only about 34,000 tuna swimming in the entire western Atlantic, down 82 percent from 1960s levels when the commission started "managing" the fishery.
ICCAT, which has 48 member countries, has been meeting this week in Porto de Galinhas, Brazil, to go through its annual charade of setting catch limits. They will be unveiled when it adjourns on Sunday.
I telephoned Dr. Susan Lieberman of the Pew Environmental Group, who is attending the session, to see how things were going. She answered just as she was leaving the conference room and heading out to dinner. I'm not sure whether she sounded more frustrated or pessimistic. In an address to the ICCAT delegates earlier in the week, Lieberman couldn't have been more clear about her group's catch-limit recommendation for Atlantic bluefins: zero.
If science doesn't convince ICCAT to act logically, maybe common sense will."Looking at the science, there's nothing else that makes any sense," she said. "The current quota is driving the species to commercial extinction."
Not that ICCAT ever pays much attention to science. "Last year ICCAT's scientists said that the quota should be no higher than 15,000 metric tons," said Lieberman. "So they went with 23,000 tons. In reality, with overfishing and illegal fishing, what they actually took is much higher. You can pretty much figure that it was double the quota. What we're calling for is to suspend the fishery. Let it recover, and then you can go back to fishing. But there's tremendous opposition, particularly from the European Union, to cutting anything."
Bluefins are amazing animals. They can live for 40 years and attain weights of 1,600 pounds, yet they blast through the water at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour. In other respects, they have everything going against them. The tuna grow slowly, and young females lay a only fraction the number of eggs that older ones do. They only have two spawning grounds, one in the Gulf of Mexico and one in the Mediterranean Sea, and when they are on them, tuna form tight schools, making them easy to catch.
If ICCAT fails to act responsibly (and I haven't heard of anyone who is betting that it will), Atlantic bluefins' last hope for survival could rest with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). That group will meet in March 2010 to consider a proposal to list bluefin on its Appendix I, which would ban international trade in the fish. Interestingly, last month ICCAT's own researchers reported that the species clearly qualified for inclusion.
If science doesn't convince ICCAT to act logically, maybe common sense will. "We're not saying that no one should ever eat bluefin sushi again," said Lieberman. "We're saying that if you want to eat it in the future, you've got to bite the bullet and do the right thing now."
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You just said there are about 34,000 tuna swimming in the Western Atlantic. If each weighs 1,600 pounds as you suggest, there is at most 54.4 million pounds of bluefin in the Western Atlantic. Yet Lieberman is quoted as saying the catch was 46,000 tons, or 92 million pounds.
How can this be?
Humans can weigh up to 1,400lb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_heaviest_people) This does not mean that every human does.
I was just trying to give Barry the benefit of the doubt. His post cites numbers that suggest bluefin tuna were fished to extinction last year. But your point is absolutely right; there is probably a lot less than 54.4 million pounds of fish in the Western Atlantic, making either Barry's or Lieberman's claims somewhat dubious.
Thanks. Good catch. The 34,000 figure refers to the bluefins in the WESTERN Atlantic. There is also a population in the Eastern Atlantic. Perhaps that explains the discrepancy.
I highly recommend reading the book Tuna which details the history of tuna fishing, attempts at 'farming' and breeding attempts for mass production.
This has been a cataclysm building for decades and it's finally about to crash.
let them go extinct. it may not be worth the expense and effort to save them when the political will is not there. a few major, high profile extinctions will help turn around public thinking toward more conservation and set up a political climate that will allow other species to be saved.
Ronval912: The background species extinction rate is somewhere between 10 and 100 species per year, but the current rate is around 27,000 per year. While allowing charismatic species to go extinct may generate additional pressure, it hasn't historically succeeded in preventing the extinction of new species. A majority of the worlds fisheries are collapsed or in decline: why not fight for an economically valuable one?
I don't mean to nitpick, but let's specify which bluefin tuna species we're talking about here. The Atlantic bluefin, Thunnus thynnus is the true giant, and the one that's in most serious trouble. There are also two distinct Pacific bluefin species, T. orientalis and T. maccoyii.
Thanks tinisoli. You are absolutely right. It's worth noting that T. maccoyii is considered threatened and T. orientalis is considered a species of "high conservation concern" by Seafood Watch, which puts all three species in its "Avoid" category.
Shaun:it is BECAUSE blue-fin is so economically valuable that it is not worth saving. There is too much money to be made in the short term by fishing it to extinction. The resources required to make any headway against the Blue-fin fishers would be better spent on trying to make the oceans cleaner or saving the fisheries farther down the ocean food chain.
ronval912--I don't understand " so valuable it's not worth saving'. Clearly you can't be suggesting that because it's difficult to stop the extinction of an economically valuable specie that we should just throw up our hands and not try.
Those who pursue a specie to extinction for money are hoping for just such an attitude.
Reminds me of my son who when asked to clean his room says, " it's too hard and it'll just get dirty again".
Yep, he's right--- and probably trying to save the bluefin won't succeed either. But
"WHAT IF IT DOES"?
Aren't we all better for having tried??
Ronval912: Seriously? Did you read either one of your comments before you hit send? Are you familiar at all with the cascade effect? I think perhaps you should look it up. Or is your idea of "cleaning up the oceans" hunting a species to extinction? Hey, thats less fish waste to deal with!(even though fish waste itself is a food source for other species and well as a source of raw materials that WE HUMANS like to use...but I digress)Nature is a DELICATE balencing act....and what happens when you remove equal weight from both sides of a scale? It topples... what happens when there are no more Tuna? What happens to the lives that depend on the sustainability of tuna as a food source as well as those who depend on tuna as a source of income? Oh well?.. Sorry about their luck?... What if the extinction of this tuna in turn causes an overabundance of its primary food source, which in turn causes the natural extinction of ITS primary food source, which may alter migratory patterns of other species that will in turn effect the survival of another species....pretty soon, that SPECIES... will be us.
I'm just saying...
Aussie: What I'm saying is: we have limited resources for use in pursuing conservation of endangered species. Spending those resources on charismatic species in an effort that will most likely fail is a waste of those resources. We humans need to make some hard choices on which species we are going to extinguish and which species we are going to preserve. We cannot save them all and if we spread our collective conservation resources too thin, we may save none of them. Its better for us to make the hard choices and decide that the blue-fin may not be worth the effort.
Mach70: I well aware of the cascade effect. It seems unlikely that there our other species that are dependent on the blue-fin at any stage of it's life cycle, the change of which would have deleterious effects on the ocean ecosystem as a whole. There are plenty of predators to take up the slack. However, if studies reveal that the blue-fin is critical to the ocean health as a whole, then maybe it is worth saving. It seems unlikely to me. After all, this article was published in the Food section of this website and the main argument for conservation seems to be "it tastes good" and we want to continue kill it and eat it.