Outcome of UN vote on bluefin

A U.N. meeting about wildlife trade has rejected a proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna. (AP)  More details here.

Species in the Red: Greenpeace list of fish species you should not eat

Greenpeace, to its credit, is finally moving to take the overfishing crisis seriously.  It has publish a "red list" of endangered fish species that should no longer be consumed. 

Treehugger:

Five different criteria were used by Greenpeace to identify species in the ‘red’: first, the status of the fish, whether they are threatened or endangered; second, whether destructive fishing methods are used (such as bottom trawling); third, whether harvesting the fish has negative impact on non-target species through by-catch; fourth, whether fish are caught illegally by unregulated fishing operations (or “pirate fishing”); and fifth, whether the fishery involved negatively impacts on local communities which depend on fishing for their livelihoods.

In addition to the ‘red list’, Greenpeace is also encouraging the designation of 40% of oceans as “no-take” zones (instead of the current 1%) in order to allow fish stocks to recover.

 Here's the Greenpeace list of 22 "in the red" species:

Alaska Pollock

Atlantic Cod or Scrod

Atlantic Halibut (US and Canadian)

Atlantic Salmon (wild and farmed)

Atlantic Sea Scallop

Bluefin tuna

Big Eye Tuna

Chilean Sea Bass (also sold as Patagonia Toothfish)

Greenland Halibut (also sold as Black halibut, Atlantic turbot or Arrowhead flounder)

Grouper (imported to the U.S.)

Hoki (also known as Blue Grenadier)

Monkfish

Ocean Quahog

Orange Roughy

Red Snapper

Redfish (also sold as Ocean Perch)

Sharks

Skates and Rays

South Atlantic Albacore Tuna

Swordfish

Tropical Shrimp (wild and farmed)

Yellowfin Tuna

My question: Why would anyone want to eat some of these fish anyway?  Many of the species on the list contain too many pollutants such as PCBs and mercury (tuna, swordfish) and others have substandard taste and nutritional value because of how they are produced (farmed salmon and tropical shrimp).


It's time for environmental groups to step up campaigns against restaurant chains, distributors, and grocery stores that stock these species.  Distributors of these foods can be targeted.  In regards to the urgent need to step-up this campaign, Greenpeace is off to a late start, but a promising one.

Who will save the bluefin tuna?

If nations can't agree to ban blue fish tuna fishing this week, it may be the end of the line for that species.

From an article about the documentary film End of the Line by Charles Clover in the Times of Malta:

He described one of the most shocking discoveries during his research:

“It was when I realised that the scientific advice was that the bluefin quota in 2007 should be 10,000 tonnes for recovery, 15,000 tonnes to be sustainable. But the EU and ICCAT connived to set it at 29,500 tonnes – and the fishermen caught 61,000 tonnes. At that moment, I realised we were filming something rather like the last buffalo hunt.”

Here's the trailer:

Bluefin tuna: endangered and overfished

UPDATE:  See this post.

This week delegates at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) consider a proposal on the table for a complete ban on international trade of the bluefin tuna to allow stocks to regenerate.   Clearly, the time has come to ban the fishing of bluefish tuna, but a number of countries refuse to act responsibly.  In this post, we are going to name and shame these lousy global citizens.

NPR reports:

. . .. a ban on fishing bluefish tuna, it is necessary because the Atlantic bluefin is a migratory species that swims from the western Atlantic to the Mediterranean — putting it beyond any one country's border.  Compounding the tuna's plight is the growing threat from illegal fishing fleets and the failure of existing measures to keep the population sustainable. Patrick Van Klaveren, a delegate with the Monaco delegation. "With bluefin tuna, it's not a question of 10 or 20 years but five or six years or less to see the stock collapse."

When a fish stock "collapses" it may not come back -- ever.  Just ask a Newfoundland Atlantic Cod fisherman.  Atlantic Cod was plentiful off the Grand Banks until the fishery collapsed in the mid-1990s.

Bluefish tuna is loaded with mercury, so it's a wonder that so many people want to eat the stuff. 

RESPONSIBLE GLOBAL CITIZENS

• Monaco - "the sponsor of the proposed ban on the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna — says numbers have fallen by nearly 75 percent since 1957." (NPR)
• United States - Supporter of the ban
• Eurpean Union - Supporter of the ban

DISGRACEFUL GLOBAL CITIZENS

• China - believed to be opposed to the ban (AP)
• Canada- believed to be opposed to the ban (AP)
• Australia - "backed a weakened proposal at the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that would regulate the trade but not ban it outright." (AP)  
• New Zealand - Ministry of Fisheries wants to increase New Zealand's quota from 420 to 532 tonnes, partly because it was allocated smaller limits than other countries in previous years. (RNZ)
• Peru - backed a weakened proposal
• Spain, Greece and Malta - have significant tuna industries; they oppose the ban.
• Japan - Japanese have proposed that the tuna stocks be managed regionally, an approach conservationists say wouldn't work since the fish cross international borders... Japan won’t comply with a total ban, and would instead prefer a fishing quota....   Japan, meanwhile, hopes to fend off the ban by enlisting the support of developing nations in Africa and Latin America. Tokyo said that even if a ban is implemented, it could use a treaty technicality to opt out of the agreement by expressing “reservations,” and would then continue to import from other countries.   (NPR)  

In Japanese the word for shame or disgrace is chijoku.  

Certain other countries listed above have far smaller tuna fleets than Japan, yet have nevertheless failed to voice unequivocal support for a ban.  Arguably these countries are the most chijoku of all.
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Illustrations from How to draw a tuna.

Two of the world's biggest icebergs

One of the world's biggest icebergs recently collided with a giant glacier to form another massive iceberg.

The above image was composed by the European Space Agency.  ESA (h/t Antarcticana) explains:

This animation, made up of eight Envisat radar images, shows the 97-km long B-9B iceberg (right) ramming into the Mertz Glacier Tongue in Eastern Antarctica in early February 2010. The collision caused a chunk of the glacier’s tongue to snap off, giving birth to another iceberg nearly as large as B-9B. The new iceberg, named C-28, is roughly 78-km long and 39-km wide, with a surface area of 2500 sq km (the size of Luxembourg).