Bluefin tuna being fished to extinction

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...00.html?cnn=yes

Thanks for the update Mike. I will try to keep this reply "professional" as my concerns for the planet and all of her inhabitants is stressed by the human expertise to turn our backs for the buck!

Instead of all that how about this:

http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_wo...an_do/index.cfm

Hardy seems like enough.

Other ideas?

The thing that really gets me is, even in the face of their own scientists recommendations and their own prior statements, they still set the quotas higher. How can such blatant fishery lobbying go unchecked? At this point an all out ban is the only thing the "might" save the bluefin.

This is a classic case of the power of money and traditional jobs winning out over a natural resource. The rarer the BFT's get the more they are worth. I remember reading an article in Saltwater Sportsman back in like 1990 called "The Last Bluefin" where the author fantasized about hunting for the last tune using an airplane and a missile/harpoon. Of course the fish was worth hundreds of thousands. Couple that with the fact that a large percentage of the med. area folks have been traditionally fishing for thousands of years and you have a seemingly un-solvable problem.

Regards,

James

It is a classic story. People NEVER learn. All you have to do is look throughout history and you will find more stories like this than you can count. Let's see: Buffalo, dodo, galapagos tortoise, cod, chilean sea bass (patagonian toothfish), rockfish, most whales, etc., etc. Everyone hunted and/or fished to the brink and no one would do anything unti the situation was so dire as to be beyond hope of recovery. I recall seeing a shwo on the state of the fishing industry in Iceland. Catches went up for years and then plateaued as more and more technology was applied; sonar, bigger nets, etc. Then the fishery started to go south quickly. And the fishermen they interviewd all said, "the ocean is a big place and there are more fish down there, we just need better methods to find them." Maybe they all just needed airplanes and missiles. I would invite anyone/everyone to pick up a copy of "Song for the Blue Ocean" by Carl Safina. He tells the story of the U.S. effort to try to "manage" the tuna fishery". It's sad.

You just have to love this quote from the article:

"None of the [fisheries] commissioners want to come back home and say 'I have saved bluefin tuna but I have ruined my fishing industry',"

Of course not, when you can go home and say five years later, "I did BOTH -- I ruined my fishing industry AND killed off the tuna!"

It's the tragedy of the commons.

It's the tragedy of the commons.

Yep, exactly. Your comment also caused me to remember a book I read some time ago. It's called "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt (1946). While I don't necessarily agree with all the places his fundamental lesson takes him, that fundamental lesson (the ONE lesson) that he carries through the book is apropos:

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups"

He goes on to explain that it is often very easy for people with agendas to explain things with half truths and in terms of only immediate effects on certain groups. Those trying to add the other half of the truth and/or explain the longer term effects on the larger groups are often required to make a argument containing long complicated chains of reasoning that the average person quickly becomes bored with. Such is the life of someone trying to protect natural resources from exploitation.

Mike

To add a bit of personal experience to this thread. I worked for Greenpeace as a photographer this summer during its Mediterranean campaign which sort to demonstrate against the wholesale slaughter of bluefin tuna. The amount of money invested in scooping every tuna - no matter its size, from the water was astronomical. The catch quota is well below the amount the boats are capable capacity - by hundreds of times. The correctly sized fish caught are dispatched to markets straight away and anything too small is put into pens and transported to fattening farms. This takes out pretty much all the fish out of the chain. The fish are pulled for weeks across the sea at 1 knot to the fattening farms and quite a few die enroute.

All of this takes place in international waters and by boats from various nations - Spain, Italy, France, Turkey, Greece. They work together and separately - its a very confusing industry to get a grip of. And there is a huge amount of money tied up in it. I would love to see common sense prevail around the tuna industry and in fact all fishing industries, but money these days seems to win out.

I hope the likes of Greenpeace and WWF and the other organisations keep the pressure on. They almost won through this year.

Good for you Gavin! Are you willing to post some of your images from that that trip in this thread. I for one would love to see some frontline coverage.

-shawn

A bit more to add to this thread. It seems that not only is government unwilling to mark hard decisions on tuna, but they are actively collaborating with the tuna companies to hide some of their dirty secrets.

Why Mercury Tuna Is Still Legal

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/20...a-surprise.html

Good for you Gavin! Are you willing to post some of your images from that that trip in this thread. I for one would love to see some frontline coverage.

-shawn

Gavin showed some of his images at a BSoUP meeting earlier in the year - but I think that they are still under rights restrictions from Greenpeace at the moment.