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Pacific bluefin tuna are swimming toward sustainability


Sushi made with toro, the raw belly meat of bluefin tuna(Wikimedia)

MONTEREY – International cooperation is reeling the world’s most valuable fish back from the shores of extinction.

The population of Pacific bluefin tuna ascended 1,000% between 2014 and 2022, scientists learned at a conference in June. They did not expect to reach this milestone until 2034.

“This is one of the biggest moments in sustainable seafood history,” says Matt Beaudin, executive chef at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

In response, the aquarium’s Seafood Watch upgraded some bluefin caught off the coast of California and Mexico from red (avoid) to yellow (good alternative). A yellow rating means that catching the fish has some negative environmental impact, but is not entirely unsustainable. This is the first time Seafood Watch has updated the fish’s status in the program’s 25-year history.

Such a development was unimaginable 10 years ago.

Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch: A fixture in the conversation about sustainable seafood

In 2014, Pacific bluefin tuna were at their lowest levels ever. A report from an international scientific committee warned that their numbers had fallen to 2-5% of what they would be without fishing. Even more, fishermen snagged 90% of bluefin tuna before they grew old enough to reproduce, meaning that the meager population was at risk of not producing enough eggs to sustain its present, tiny levels.

Then nations around the Pacific reduced fishing quotas to give the tuna a chance to recover.

“I’m very optimistic about what we can do when we work together to solve a problem that we mutually share,” says Corbett Nash, outreach manager at Seafood Watch.

Sushi made with toro, the raw belly meat of bluefin tuna(Wikimedia) 

While many ocean creatures have been overfished, bluefin tuna are uniquely imperiled because they are among the world’s most valuable seafood. In 2013, a 489-pound bluefin sold for $1.76 million in a Tokyo fish market. That’s almost $3,600 per pound.

“I’ve never had it myself,” Nash says. “But I understand from people who have that there’s nothing quite like it.”

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has been a strong advocate for bluefin tuna conservation.

In 2017, it published a pledge from nearly 200 high-profile chefs to stop serving Pacific bluefin tuna until countries began fishing them more sustainably.

“Sometimes in order to make an impact, you have to pull the emergency brake to get people to pay attention,” Beaudin says. “Not eating it was dramatic and it made the impact we were looking for.”

He says that recommendations from scientists alone are not enough. If consumers kept buying Pacific bluefin tuna, they would wipe out the species. The pledge was one way to get the public to recognize the tuna were seriously overfished.

Nick Rahaim, a public affairs officer at NOAA, says the most important thing that has helped bluefin tuna begin to recover is catching fewer of them. Resolutions from the IATTC, the organization that coordinates tuna fishing off the coast of the Americas, show that the United States and Mexico decreased their catch limit by nearly 40% between 2014 and 2015. Those countries fish nearly all the bluefin caught in the region.

While …read more

Source:: The Mercury News

      

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