By Keith Johnson, Wallstreet Journal
Tuna fish made a rare foray into headlines Tuesday, when a prized bluefin fetched $104,000 at a
â€It was the best tuna of the day, but the price shot up because of the shortage of domestic bluefin,†[fish market official Takashi] Yoshida said, citing rough weather in December. Buyers vied for only three Oma bluefin tuna Monday, compared with 41 at the 2008 New Year's auction.
Bluefin tuna make up just a fraction of the world's tuna haul each year; most supermarket shelves are stocked with cans of much more plentiful skipjack. But industrial fishing threatens all species of tuna, Greenpeace warned in a recent report, from the high-end fish used for sashimi to the stuff in your white-bread sandwich. The bluefin has been listed as endangered since 1996 by the World Conservation Union.
The bluefin and bigeye stocks worldwide are those in the most immediate danger of collapse with some stocks threatened with extinction. The bluefin tuna crisis is so critical that retailers must stop selling all bluefin tuna until stocks recover.
Longer term, in addition to more restrictive fishing quotas and consumer vigilance, Greenpeace would like to see big swathes of the Pacific declared off-limits for fishing until bluefin and other threatened species of tuna can recover.
Coincidentally, that’s pretty much what President Bush will do when he signs the most ambitious ocean conservation measure ever, declaring almost 200,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean U.S. “marine national monuments,†which restricts commercial fishing, as well as any oil or gas exploration.
The areas President Bush will mark for conservation dovetail with much of the spawning ground of the southern bluefin, including waters around Guam, the
President Bush will leave office vilified by many environmentalists. But future sushi lovers, at least, may have cause to toast his legacy.