Due to some technical difficulties with comments, I have had to re-post this entry. Some comments may have been lost in so doing...
After the New York Times ran this week's article, Waiter, There's Deer in My Sushi, they followed it up with two more: U.S. Accuses Europe of Overfishing in the Atlantic and then, two days later, an editorial on Japan's Tuna Crisis.
The east Atlantic and west Atlantic populations of bluefin tuna are both overfished.
The first article calls us to sympathize with Japan and sushi's glum future of deer and horse meat. The second article nails the supposedly environmentally progressive Europeans for not scaling back tuna fishing in the Mediterranean (though Carl Safina points out that the U.S. has overfished the west Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks in the Gulf of Mexico). The third article is unsympathetic to the tuna empire's collapse and says the Japanese, with their high seafood demand, had it coming to them. This editorial calls for a system of 'global discipline', which sounds authoratative and down-to-business, but, for Pete's sake, are we not a little too late for that?
Rather than actually fixing problems, humans seem more inclined to talk about who they should blame and with whom they should sympathize. For the record, at fault are all the eaters and fishers of bluefin tuna and, most of all, the governments (and, lest we forget, the citizens behind them) mandadated to regulate our public resources.
And there are only three things I feel sorry for as tuna stocks dwindle: myself (naturally), Bluefin tuna, and future generations (though I do have a twinge of sadness at the silenced songs of the Mediterranean's tonnara--an ancient system of catching tuna with intricate underwater mazes). These leopards of the sea (and our baseline of bluefin populations) are going, going...
Comments
Does the graph indicate that western stocks collapsed as far back as 1983 and the eastern stocks more recently? If the collapse of one basin's stocks was seen over 24 years ago, why only now the hue and cry in the main stream media?
Posted by: Jeb, FCD | June 29, 2007 5:57 AM
I am glad you brought up this point. This graph does not indicate it (it's baseline is so constrained), but the western stock of Atlantic bluefin showed signs of overfishing in the 1960s (and probably even before). With the western stock on this graph, we're just seeing the tail end of overfishing. In 1992, the western Atlantic bluefin spawning population was estimated to have declined to 10 percent of its 1975 level (which was, recall, already overfished).
Apparently, there was hue and cry in the media even in the mid-1990s, when most of the loss of tuna was uncovered (see this report for Congress). Carl Safina's 1998 Song for the Blue Ocean did a very detailed and wonderful job documenting the tuna's demise. In 2001, there was another big stink about tuna declines in Science magazine. Alas, the human memory is so wonderful at forgetting so here we are again in 2007.
Posted by: Jennifer Jacquet | June 29, 2007 6:01 AM