Thursday, September 01, 2011

Bluefin tuna crisis, again

Bluefin tuna are in trouble, again. This time it's the southern bluefin tuna, the more endangered cousin of the Atlantic bluefin tuna that was much in the news last year.

It's the same tired story, conservation advocates call for reduced fishing, and some fishing interests want to keep fishing. This time, however, Japan is skeptical of the wisdom of maintaining or increasing fishing levels. Maybe pressure to put Atlantic bluefin on the CITES list of endangered species has encouraged bluefin conservation.

3 comments:

Horizon Charters Guadalupe Cage Diving said...

Just too tasty a fish to survive and at $500 a kilo to expensive to conserve.

The price for Southern Bluefin is only going up, match that with rising fuel costs and you have a perfect storm of species decline and loss.

Anonymous said...

Back in the late 80's, a school of giant bluefin tuna came into the Southern California bight. they were immediately jumped by the commercial fleet. Within weeks they were extracted--GONE! Some individuals went over a thousand pounds. They removed THE most successful individuals from the gene pool and to my knowledge, no BFT of that size have been seen in the Eastern pacific since...

Anonymous said...

Back in the late 80's, a school of giant bluefin tuna came into the Southern California bight. they were immediately jumped by the commercial fleet. Within weeks they were extracted--GONE! Some individuals went over a thousand pounds. They removed THE most successful individuals from the gene pool and to my knowledge, no BFT of that size have been seen in the Eastern pacific since...