Edible San Francisco

EDITORS NOTE: BLUE FINALE

By Bruce Cole

While Bay Area salmon (and salmon lovers) are suffering through one of the worst seasons in recent memory, there’s an even bigger fish in the sea with the devastating numbers to match our local orange-fleshed favorite. Bluefin tuna (the kind prized for sushi such as maguro and toro) populations have declined by 99 percent in the last 40 years, and yet little has been done to halt the slide toward an almost certain collapse of the species.

Part of the bluefin’s plight can be laid at the feet of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), an organization entrusted with managing tuna landings. U.S. sustainability experts have been withering in their criticism of the ICCAT for consistently ignoring its own scientists’ recommendations for catch levels, routinely increasing fishing quotas and thus granting its 42 nation members the permission to practically extinguish the fish. Carl Safina, one of America’s preëminent marine biologists, snidely—and perhaps justifiably—calls the ICCAT the International Conspiracy to Catch All the Tuna.

Tuna raised in “tuna ranches” have been offered as a solution to over-harvesting, but like most carnivorous farmed seafood, the ratio of feed to meat is ridiculously out of proportion. According to Taras Grescoe’s Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood (see Books in Brief, page 10 of the current issue), it takes almost 20 pounds of sardines, herring, and/or anchovies to produce one pound of farmed tuna. Which means that in our attempt to save the bluefin, we are wiping out their food chain.

While the travesties of industrial animal agriculture are hidden behind the walls of windowless hangar-sized hog barns in Iowa and North Carolina, the catastrophe of the sea is hidden under its waves. Tuna, salmon, swordfish, sea bass, and cod are all victims of their own invisibility to man, and unless you’ve got a seat on the bridge of a huge ocean trawler that’s hauling in tons of fish a day, the enormity of the damage remains unseen. Never before have we imagined an empty ocean, but now we may have no choice but to live with it.

Not to end this editor’s note on a downer (but what the heck, I’m on a roll), all this tuna gloom and doom has definitely taken its toll on me at the sushi bar. I can no longer, in good conscience, order a bright-red slab of maguro or its fatty cousin, toro. And that is totally depressing. Worse yet, try finding a sushi bar anywhere that doesn’t serve bluefin tuna. Remember the “Take a Pass on Chilean Sea Bass” campaign that galvanized chefs to quit serving the fish on their menus? Where’s a good “buoycott” when you need one?

Sign the Conserve Our Ocean Legacy campaign's petition to save tuna:

"Bluefin tuna are having a hard time surviving. Once abundant and thriving, the bluefin tuna population declined by 99 percent between 1963 and 2007, bringing this overfished species to the brink of extinction.

Last year, the president signed a law to end the overfishing of U.S. fish by 2011. There's just one catch: overexploited species like bluefin tuna only have a chance to survive if the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) creates rules that follow the letter of the law and are strong enough to meet its goals.

In the next few months, NMFS will present new annual catch limits and environmental review rules. We need your voice to remind NMFS that it's not just a good idea to set rules that will help fish like bluefin tuna survive, it's the law.

Help bluefin survive by sending your personal comment to NMFS now." Click here to sign the petiton.

EDIBLE NOTES: Tataki, one of San Francisco's few sustainable sushi bars:

“The five most popular sushi items in the United States —longline tuna, farmed salmon, farmed imported shrimp, farmed freshwater eel (unagi), and farmed Japanese amberjack (hamachi)—are all generally unsustainable. Tataki is the only sushi restaurant in the U.S. to offer sustainable alternatives to all five.”

Visit their website for more information: Tataki Sushi Bar. Tataki on Yelp.

Check out Sebo, the Hayes Valley sushi restaurant that features Kindai Honmaguro, tuna that has been cultivated from the egg by Kinki University in Japan. Read more on Marcia Gagliardi's (The Abalone Rangers) Tablehopper.

MORE TUNA RESOURCES:

The National Marine Fisheries Service Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Fishwatch Page.

The NOAA Fisheries Issues Statement on Senate and House Bluefin Tuna Resolutions: click here.

The WWF on Tuna Management Madness: click here.

Tuna Greed, by James L. Connaughton and William T. Hogarth of the Boston Globe: click here.

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