THE END OF THE YELLOWFIN TUNA

[Anonymous]

Sushi sales and shrinking stocks
By
early morning, the last tuna of the day – a giant, glistening yellowfin
as big as the fishermen who had hauled it ashore – was already gutted
and cleaned, and ready for John Heitz to pass judgement.Fish can travel
from port to plate within 25 hoursMr Heitz, a lanky, amiable American
who has been in the tuna business for 20 years, took out a
two-foot-long, hollow needle, and pushed it into the fish’s
side.”Good,” he declared, inspecting a thin worm-like sample of fresh
sashimi. “Ice it and pack it.”Within 30 minutes, the tuna would be
joining 50 others at the local airport.Within 24 hours it would
probably be raw and pink on someone’s plate at a sushi restaurant in
San Francisco.

Diminishing stocks
Every day of the year, some
200 tons of fresh tuna are brought ashore at the quayside in this
crowded port city at the southern edge of Mindanao island.But the size
of the catch is shrinking ominously, and today almost everyone involved
in the industry here acknowledges that it is heading into deep
trouble.”It’s getting worse,” said John Heitz. “There are just too many
people chasing too few fish. It seems like the industry is in denial.
Taiwanese boats, mainline Chinese, South Korean, Japanese, European –
everybody is fishing.”

Low local catches mean many farmers seek fish in distant waters
Without
radical change, he warned, “the industry will not survive”.Tuna is one
of the world’s favourite fish – from cans and steaks to the luxury
sashimi market.But in the past few decades, as demand has soared, the
fleets chasing these migratory animals around the world’s oceans have
grown dramatically in size and sophistication.

Factory ships now stay at sea for years at a time, using giant “purse-seine” nets to catch entire shoals.
It
has become a murky, ferociously competitive business, with a
significant percentage of tuna, between 15-50% according to various
estimates, “poached” by unlicensed operators who deliberately obscure
the catch’s origins.Standing on the quayside, watching the controlled
frenzy of a dozen boats being unloaded at once, Roger Lim – one of
General Santos’ most prominent fishermen with a fleet of more than 100
boats – sounded pessimistic.”In 15 years there will be no more tuna,”
he said.

High-tech boats
Mr Lim’s boats all use traditional
baited fishing lines to catch individual yellowfin tuna, primarily for
the US and European steak and sashimi markets.This method is, he says,
sustainable. “We don’t catch the small, immature fish. If all boats
used handlines, there would be no overfishing.”This business is getting
dangerous and risky. And life is getting harder

Japan’s food crisis
He
turned and pointed accusingly along the quayside, to where the
purse-seine boats were unloading their own catch of smaller, skipjack
tuna, destined for the canneries on the edge of town.”They will destroy
our waters,” he said. “We need the government to intervene.”Marfenio
Tan, 61, has been chasing tuna since he was 12.Today, he owns 10
purse-seine boats in General Santos and – since there are few tuna left
in the waters around the Philippines – a licence to fish off the coast
of Papua New Guinea.”We want a long-term industry,” he said.”Everybody
must do conservation,” said Mr Tan, pointing to new regulations halving
the number of days he is now allowed to fish in the waters of Papua New
Guinea.

Policing the seas
“We are just starting to implement a programme to save the tuna.”For us to have a future, everyone must obey the law,” he said.

    
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News 24.
But he acknowledged that many bigger ships were simply
ignoring the new rules, and that the Philippines’ navy, like many
others in the region, was unable to police the seas effectively.”And
now China is starting to buy and fish for tuna too,” he said. “If they
develop a taste for it, then they will take everything.”For millions of
subsistence fishermen, living in coastal communities around the
Pacific, the decline in tuna stocks is already having a profound
effect.Half an hour’s drive from General Santos, on the far side of the
bay, the impoverished village of Kawas is struggling.”A few years back,
we would catch the tuna just off-shore – maybe one day’s sail from
here,” said Raul Meijia, 38.Now it takes five-to-seven days to reach
the nearest fishing grounds, which are located, inconveniently, in
Indonesian waters.Mr Meijia’s neighbour has just come home after three
months in an Indonesian prison, having been caught poaching.”This
business is getting dangerous and risky,” said Mr Meijia. “And life is
getting harder.”

Dead fish surface on Indian river
Thousands
of dead fish have been washed ashore in a river in the north-eastern
Indian state of Assam river since early this week.They were discovered
on the banks of the Brahmaputra river in the state capital, Guwahati.An
equal number of sick fish were found in the same place, officials said.
They blamed rising pollution levels.An investigation has been ordered
by the Assam government, said C.K.Bhuiyan, senior district official in
Guwahati.

‘Zero pollution’
Earlier in the year, the Assam
Pollution Control Board (APCB) told all the oil refineries in the state
to achieve “zero pollution” levels by 31 December, otherwise they would
be threatened with closure.The Guwahati refinery was found to be the
worst polluting refinery and was perhaps the only one in Assam not to
have yet complied, pollution control board officials said.”The marine
life in the Brahmaputra river has been seriously affected by the
pollution caused by these refineries, particularly the Guwahati
refinery,” said Jawaharlal Dutta, APCB chairman.He alleged that
pollution from these refineries was several hundred times above the
permissible limits.But district officials who are monitoring the
development were not ruling out other possible causes.”It could be a
case of poisoning caused by water pollution or maybe an outcome of some
kind of explosion inside the water to catch fish in large numbers from
the river. We are not ruling out either possibility at this moment,” Mr
Bhuiyan said.Killing of fish by using explosives and chemical
fertilisers or other poisonous substances is not uncommon in Assam,
especially during the winter. 

[Author]

December 20, 2007 at 3:11 PM