Bluefin Tuna in Hot Water

Spicy tuna rolls may taste delicious, but the flavorful sushi treats create some pretty massive environmental destruction. Atlantic bluefin tuna are seriously overfished, with population numbers plummeting by up to 85 percent in recent years. According to a new article, the tuna situation may be even more bleak than environmentalists ever thought possible.

As the New York Times reports, member countries of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) will meet in Paris next month. What's decided at the meeting could make or break bluefin tuna's survival.

The ICCAT meeting establishes yearly catch limits for the threatened fish. Scientists say that if nations stick to 2009's catch limit — 13,500 tons — the overfished bluefin stand a 60 percent chance of bouncing back by 2019. But based on fishing nations' past history with illegal and underreported catches, it seems like the odds of survival are stacked against the struggling bluefin.

Every year, fishing nations are supposed to report the amount of bluefin tuna they catch. This data is analyzed and used to evaluate bluefin tuna's population numbers and establish catch limits. However, as the NYT reports, most nations fail to accurately report the number of tuna they take from the seas. "Some years, some countries don't report," Brad Smith, a marine ecologist with the Pew Environment Group, told the NYT. "Or they report too late. Or they underreport. When there's so much non-compliance, nobody complains." Last year alone, 85 percent of fishing nations failed to meet reporting deadlines or accurately depict how much tuna they caught. Smith estimates that Mediterranean nations — which catch some of the highest amounts of bluefin — underreported their catches by as much as two-thirds. That complete lack of transparency makes it virtually impossible to set up stringent bluefin tuna conservation measures.

What's worse is that many nations catch bluefin illegally. Illegal fishing of all kinds runs rampant on the high seas, but it's especially problematic for bluefin because the swimmers can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars per fish.

Lax regulations and a high price per pound don't provide much incentive for fishermen to take it easy on the tuna. What would help boost the struggling swimmers population numbers is a moratorium on bluefin fishing. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), already said that if not enough progress was made at the upcoming ICCAT meeting, she would consider a moratorium on bluefin tuna fishing. Sign our petition asking Lubchenco to push for a moratorium now — it may be the only way to prevent bluefin tuna from going the way of the Dodo.

Photo credit: FreeCat via Flickr