According to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), one of the worlds largest and most respected independent conservation organizations, the breeding stock of Mediterranean blue fin tuna is on course to disappear by 2012 if current fishing practices remain unchanged.
This is not environmentalist scare tactics, which I feel we sometimes see too much of and wind up ignoring factual reports, this is based on hard scientific evidence based on tracking population and catch rates in the region over a period of years.
The main concern here is the breed stock of the blue fin, fish that are four years old and over 35kg. In 2007 the population of breeding tuna was one fourth of the levels 50 years ago. The decline has accelerated greatly in the last 10 years.
Before the advent of large scale industrial fishing, blue fin in the area were weighing in as high as 900kg. Now the average catch off the coast of Libya is a mere 65kg.This has had a huge impact on the population of the species, as these giant tunas were prolific breeders, and in their absence the population suffers greatly.
WWF is calling for an immediate closure of the blue fin fishery in the Mediterranean to give the species a chance to recover, but the prospects of that happening are not good. The season has started business as usual.
Most of us have never eaten blue fin, or even seen it in a market for that matter. It is an elitist luxury gourmet item that is easily substituted by the much more abundant Ahi tunas (yellow fin and big eye).
It's a shame that such a wonderful fish will soon be gone just so some unaware socialite can have their exclusive sashimi. Wonder what they'll eat out of existence next?
Yea I know what your talking about fishing out fish populations seems be the norm. As humans we have a chance to chance it and it's about time we did. Even recreation fishing face the same sort of problems. They have to clean everything out. Lets stop this before we cant go back.
ReplyDeleteAnnette
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