Here's something to think about next time you're browsing those neat strips of pink flesh in the refrigerated display case at the Japanese restaurant.Bluefin tuna, already critically endangered, are on a fast track to extinction as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Using satellite data from the European Space Agency, researchers estimate that the BP oil spill killed more than 20% of the juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), adding that loss to the 82% drop in the world's population of bluefin over the past 30 years as a result of overfishing, has listed bluefin as "Critically Endangered" -- a step away from extinction.
Unless fishing is suspended, bluefin are on track to become functionally extinct by 2012.
The US National Marine Fisheries Service, acknowledging that the world's bluefin population is on the brink, announced after the BP spill that it would consider listing bluefin under the Endangered Species Act.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the IUCN study confirms environmentalists' worst fears about the impact of the BP spill on bluefin, and virtually makes the case for listing the species as endangered.
Question is why the federal government hasn't done so already.
Conservationists have been trying for years to ban tuna fishing, but the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) -- a tool of the tuna fishing industry that scientists jokingly call the "International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna" -- overrides its own scientists' quota recommendations.
Earlier this year, a proposed trade ban failed at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) -- after heavy lobbying by the sushi-loving Japanese.
Ironically, Japan is currently hosting the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), an international event aimed at stemming the loss of biodiversity worldwide.
The article from MongaBay.
Posts
