National Geographic deals its viewers a fairly even-handed look at the bluefin tuna. And ultimately, the takeaway message may be that ironically the best way Americans can help save this fish is by supporting New England’s artisanal bluefin fishery.
Despite rampant international mismanagement, however, the U.S. bluefin fishery is indisputably the most sustainably managed in the world. The vast majority of the bluefin caught in the United States is landed in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, and only hand gear—rod and reel or hand-thrown harpoon—is permitted in the domestic bluefin fishery, while the remainder of landings come as bycatch in longline fisheriestargeting swordfish and other tuna species primarily in the Gulf of Maine and the Gulf of Mexico. We even include requirements to make those fisheries more bluefin friendly by using specialized gear known as “circle hooks” and “weak hooks” proven to reduce bycatch of bluefin and other nontarget species like sea turtles.
Meanwhile, European fisheries frequently use purse seines—massive nets that encircle entire schools of juvenile tuna. The small fish are subsequently transferred to holding pens or “ranches” where they remain until they reach marketable size. This means the fish are removed from the ecosystem before they have a chance to spawn—an inherently unsustainable practice.
In recent years, the tremendous value of the fish themselves has made ICCAT’s job more difficult. As “Wicked Tuna” participants discuss, the fish they pursue in the North Atlantic can be worth as much as $20,000 apiece. In 2010, of the more than 13,000 metric tons of documented worldwide harvest (the illegally harvested fish likely drive that figure significantly higher), U.S. fishermen landed just more than 600 metric tons of bluefin, which sold at the dock for $9.3 million, not quite $7 per pound.
While $7 a pound is a pretty nice price—lobster by comparison averages between $3 and $4 per pound at the dock—it’s nowhere near the vastly inflated prices that are widely reported in international media on the rare instances they occur. Earlier this year, for example, a single fish sold for a record price of $736,000 in Tokyo’s Tujiki fish market—an unheard-of $1,238 per pound.
Far from being the norm, this is literally a lottery ticket fish. Traditionally, in Japan, a big spender will make a splash bidding an exorbitant amount of money to buy the first bluefin of the year caught off a region in northern Japan thought to have the best tuna in the world. This year, in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami, Japanese restaurateur Kiyoshi Kimura bellied up more than $1,200 per pound for the prize fish to “liven up Japan” and “help it recover from the tragedy.”
Read the full article at the Center for American Progress.