Shifting Baselines

Dead on arrival.

November was the month for Atlantic bluefin tuna. Well, it could have been. The New York Times was optimistic but alas, after a week of debates in Turkey, the international tuna commission, in its brilliance, decided to increase the quota for bluefin by 1000 tonnes.

The bluefin is revered by most seafaring people, including Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean and promoter of the Sea Ethic. In a guest essay for Grist, Safina explains that ICCAT 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.

Today, Lawrence Downes describes his late encounter with a bluefin at a Japanese supermarket in New Jersey. His essay laments the passing of the bluefin and seems to succumb to the thought of its extinction.

This fish, the man said, was 8 to 10 years old, young for a bluefin, which reaches spawning at 12. How lucky we were to see and soon eat such a precious commodity. He was right: unless you are an ocean fisherman, a seafood wholesaler or another bluefin, you won't often encounter something so rare and beautiful before it is disassembled.

Carl Safina ends his essay with:

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.

Yes, I fully agree, but the question I have is: HOW?