Bluefin Tuna on the Verge of Extinction?

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862255,00.html?cnn=yes

by ComputerGuru • 18 years ago

17 9 18 years ago

ramchip• 18 years ago

You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tuna fish...

bd3• 18 years ago

Let's be more precise: the article speaks about bluefin tuna, one of the many tuna species, the high-end expensive one used for sushi.

Other tuna species (that are usually sold in cans) seem to be doing ok.

Just to get the perspective - three bluefin species all together make just over 1% of all tuna catches:

http://www.fao.org/fishery/statistics/tuna-catches/en

whacked_new3• 18 years ago

IIRC, the other tuna species are not doing ok. They are projected to be gone within 40 years if current consumption trends continue. Of course that disqualifies them from "on the verge," but 40 years is hella fast in terms of extinction, or even from totally safe to not-safe.

bd3• 18 years ago

We are speaking about self-replicating beings. This is not oil, that once drilled is gone forever. Predicting 40 years into future is hard.

But there is definitely a problem. A fundamental one. Overfishing is a classical "tragedy of commons" example. There are no easy solutions.

fbbwsa• 18 years ago

i know this is a terrible thing to say... but...

I love bluefin tuna. its delicious. knowing that i might not be able to eat it in a few years leaves me conflicted between increasing consumption for my personal enjoyment (at the cost of the burden of knowing that I'm accelerating bluefin toward its extinction) and decreasing personal consumption for the small moral victory that I at least tried to help keep a species on earth (at the cost of decreased sushi enjoyment).

If God wanted bluefin to survive, maybe He should have made them less tasty.

dhughes• 18 years ago

"...the world's remaining stocks of bluefin tuna, 90% of which are in the Mediterranean, could be on the verge of extinction." "...biologists predict that this year [2006] approximately 50,000 tons of tuna will be caught in the Med."

They fish Bluefin Tuna where I live (PEI, Canada) but it's one at a time with a rod sort of like Marlin or Swordfish. The quota here is 100 to 200 tons, I couldn't imagine 50,000 tons!

Bluefin Tuna on the Verge of Extinction?

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