Chart courtesy of the Pew Environment Group and Marine Fish Conservation Network
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.
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.”
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.
You describe Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar as "One of San Francisco's few sustainable sushi bars." This is not the case. Tataki is in fact San Francisco's -- and the United States' -- only sustainable sushi bar. Every item on the menu is sourced from environmentally friendly sources.
A comparison to Cebu due to their use of kindai is not warranted. It is true that this bluefin is raised in a closed life-cycle tank and hatched from egg, but you do not mention that this type of aquaculture still requires between 20 and 25 pounds of food fish for every pound of salable tuna. This is an impossibly high ratio and likens farming bluefin to farming lions -- patronizing this industry is simply reinforcing an unsustainable manner of eating off the top of the food chain.
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