Will bluefin tuna be the next hot item on the international black market, next to Kalashnikov rifles? Oh my...

Many years ago when I lived in Rhode Island I took part in a fishing trip to catch bluefin tuna far off the coast from the port of Point Judith. As I remember, I did little or nothing of importance. I do remember the giant fish the captain landed, the intense excitement on the boat as we brought it to the dock and the unspeaking Japanese man who met us there. He took a surgical-looking device from his coat, bored several small holes in the fish, nibbled the tissue and gave a nod. The tuna was shipped to a plant in Boston to be frozen in liquid nitrogen and would be on a plane to Japan the next morning, the captain told me cheerfully. He was many thousand dollars richer. Japanese consumers would soon enjoy many hundreds of pounds of Atlantic sushi-grade tuna.

Bluefin tuna are a much rarer catch these days. There are two populations of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic Ocean - the western Atlantic and the Mediterranean populations. In aggregate, bluefin tuna declined by more than 70 percent between 1957 and 2007, and by more than 60 percent since 2000. In the western Atlantic, the number of bluefin tuna has fallen by 82 percent since 1957, although the National Marine Fisheries Service scientists say the population now is stabilized.

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