A favorite friend of mine at Duke is Dr. Andre Boustany; a marine biologist who is part of the intrepid Tag-A-Giant team and Project GLoBAL. Tag-A-Giant is an initiative made up of an incredible group of ocean scientists from across the U.S. who work with policymakers, fishermen, and the public to maintain and rebuild sustainable bluefin tuna populations–a species facing commercial extinction due to demand for sushi.
But this is a tragic story: Western Atlantic bluefin have declined by 82% since 1970 and it’s estimated there are only remaining 41,000 remaining reproductively mature individuals:
YOU can do something that matters to protect these magnificent giants.
Next March, an upcoming vote on a proposal will take place to stop the international commercial trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna. Unfortunately, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has also proposed a measure to increase the number of bluefin tuna that can be harvested from U.S. waters. (Proposed Rule, RIN 0648-AX85, Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Season and Retention Limit Adjustments). At a time when the world is paying attention to a species in crisis, our country is not exactly setting a good example. Of course, this a complicated issue: Catch limits are presently not being met, but the discrepancy is due to regional changes, an altered population structure, and overall stock depletion. Regardless, the solution is assuredly not to increase pressure on a dwindling stock.
The Pew Environmental Group has issued a letter asking NMFS to extend the comment period on their proposal, consider additional scientific research, and allow the international community to make important decisions regarding the future of management. I hope readers and bloggers alike will join me in signing Pew’s important letter and telling NMFS to slow down this misguided proposal.
December 10th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Oh, come on! Tuna were never this large. How could they fit in the can if they were that big?
Those pictures of large tuna are clearly CGI, and the whole panic is designed to ensure funding for Big Ichthyology.
You People are only doing this because you hate free enterprise and America and probably want us all to eat tofu.
It’s not going to work. You didn’t convince me of heliocentrism or global warming and I don’t believe this.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
The NMFS proposal is only to increase the bag limit in a rod and reel category that has not been catching its share of the total US quota. The total US quota will be reduced againa in 2010 by another hundred tons down to 1,800 tons. Thus the quota has been reduced over the last few years from 2,700 mt to 1,800 tons and the western stock is projected to be fully rebuilt in 2017. Currently, the stock is not longer being overfished under the new quota.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Don’t listen to the paid contrarians who are encouraging a race to kill the last bluefin in the western Atlantic. Thanks to rampant over-fishing with pernicious gear like longlines, which kill many types of marine life, we’ve already lost other Atlantic sub-populations of bluefin, and the western Atlantic stock has been reduced to a point that it can barely sustain itself. Those who greedily massacre and export these magnificent fish for wild profits abroad, usually to Japan, have destroyed many fishing opportunities for the fishing public. A much more sustainable and economically beneficial way to manage the species is to ban international trade of bluefin, and to protect their only known spawning aggregation in the western Atlantic, which is below the Gulf of Mexico. Unbelievably, the NMFS wants to allow the commercial sector to kill even more bluefin, despite their near collapse. The third quarter update for 2009 clearly has bluefin tuna as overfished and undergoing overfishing. Here are links to the data/status: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/statusoffisheries/SOSmain.htm
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/statusoffisheries/2009/thirdquarter/q3_2009_fssi_and_nonfssi_stockstatus.pd
December 11th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Charlie, the “Chicken of the Sea” clearly needs to go on a diet! The other “fish” looks to me like a Beluga Whale, (I know, that would make it a mammal, which is why I put fish in these things, “fish”). I would hope that the picture is an example of perspective, and the whale is much farther away. If not, we are clearly doomed… DOOMED I say!
December 15th, 2009 at 9:47 am
[...] are the words Sheril somberly provides in her post at the Intersection. Carl Safina over diner once told me and others that tuna missing from the oceans was the [...]