Sushi Craze Threatens Tuna
Tuna “ranches” were first set up 10 years ago. Basically they are large underwater cages which catch fish, and fatten them up on squid and sardines. This allows the fishermen to scoop up masses of fattened tuna every few days, and leave the cages underwater to trap and capture more fish while they are away.
Tuna has become a big business throughout the Mediterranean, and the lure of up to $US15,000 for the best and biggest fish attracts dozens of new boats to the industry every year - many controlled by Asian and Italian mafias, sources say. This has been sparked by the Japanese demand for fatty flesh to make sushi. They use the Atlantic bluefin tuna - a torpedo-shaped brute weighing up to half a tonne.
Due to over-exploitation, pollution and climate change, these giant tuna are rapidly decreasing. Critics, including the United States, say European countries that control ICCAT (the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna), should take much responsibility for setting quotas at twice the level their own scientists recommend and failing to enforce them. Also, the tuna are getting smaller. Most of the tuna being caught now are less than 100kg, far less than the 500kgs easily caught 10 years ago.
The Commission did take action last month, banning giant tuna fishing for the rest of 2007 and threatening Greece, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and Cyprus with court action if they could not prove they were not over-fishing.
But if the crackdown proves too late, American fishermen could also be hit: wiping out the Mediterranean stock would end a western migration and put a huge strain on much smaller western Atlantic stocks where the two populations currently mix.
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