On the morning of June 4, in the international waters south of Malta, the Greenpeace vessels Rainbow Warrior and Arctic Sunrise deployed eight inflatable Zodiacs and skiffs into the azure surface of the Mediterranean. Protesters aboard donned helmets and took up DayGlo flags and plywood shields. With the organization’s observation helicopter hovering above, the pilots of the tiny boats hit their throttles, hurtling the fleet forward to stop what they viewed as an egregious environmental crime. It was a high-octane updating of a familiar tableau, one that anyone who has followed Greenpeace’s Save the Whales adventures of the last 35 years would have recognized. But in the waters off Malta there was not a whale to be seen.

Pauly et al 2002 Nature 418, 689-695

7 de junio de 2010
La demanda creciente de energía nos conduce a situaciones más tensas y agrava el riesgo de accidentes catastróficos que conllevan un costo elevadísimo, tanto para los medios de subsistencia humanos como para los ecosistemas. No contamos actualmente con tecnologías capaces de minimizar los riesgos y efectos de catástrofes tales como el derrame de petróleo de Deepwater Horizon en el Golfo de México. No conocemos suficientemente los ecosistemas marinos ni los impactos de tales catástrofes a corto y largo plazo. Hasta tanto no se haya profundizado adecuadamente nuestra base de conocimientos y no se hayan establecido las necesarias salvaguardas, la UICN insta a una moratoria mundial en la explotación de gas y petróleo en áreas ecológicamente vulnerables, incluyendo aguas oceánicas profundas y zonas polares.
A seis semanas de la explosión que causó el derrame petrolero en el Golfo de México, se comprueba que redundará en graves daños ecológicos y sociales. El petróleo que llega a las costas daña y seguirá dañando las praderas costeras y marinas, que son zonas vitales para la cría de camarones y sirven de hábitat a numerosas especies animales y vegetales. Se calcula que el 90% del pescado y los mariscos producidos en el Golfo de México proviene de las marismas de Luisiana, Mississippi y Alabama. Se considera que, en Estados Unidos, más de 130.000 empleos se verán afectados directamente por el derrame, sobre todo en los sectores de la pesca y del turismo. El costo económico inmediato para Luisiana se evalúa en más de 4.000 millones de dólares, pero el costo total para los ecosistemas y el empleo puede resultar muy superior. Otros países del Caribe, como México, Cuba, las Bahamas y hasta las Bermudas, podrán verse afectados por el petróleo en los próximos meses.
Las imágenes de especies y ecosistemas afectados son una vívida prueba del efecto inmediato del derrame, pero los impactos de la catástrofe a largo plazo serán de una magnitud mucho mayor. Se están utilizando dispersantes en el Golfo a una escala sin precedentes, y se inyectan en aguas oceánicas profundas sin conocer bien el alcance de su impacto. Los efectos tóxicos de estos dispersantes persistirán en la cadena alimenticia, sobre todo en especies sensibles como el plancton y los habitantes de los fondos marinos.
El fácil acceso, a bajo costo, al petróleo y al gas puso al alcance de mucha gente posibilidades y libertades que no habían existido nunca en el pasado. No obstante, nuestra excesiva dependencia de los combustibles fósiles ha sido costosa, en términos de contaminación del aire y del agua, cambios extensivos en el uso de las tierras, explotación excesiva de nuestros océanos, aumento de las emisiones de efecto invernadero y el consiguiente cambio climático. La transición hacia un futuro de energía limpia debe empezar ya. Es preciso acelerar la inversión en investigación y desarrollo sobre tecnologías limpias y eficiencia energética. Nuestras economías deben pasar rápidamente a fuentes de energía renovable y tomar en cuenta más eficazmente los impactos sobre la biodiversidad y los medios de subsistencia.
Desintoxicar a nuestras economías de su adicción a los combustibles fósiles no será fácil, y no se logrará de un día para otro, pero tampoco podemos cerrar los ojos y seguir haciendo como si nada. El alcance mundial del problema requiere una acción colaborativa entre los Estados, el sector privado y la sociedad civil. Instamos a las empresas del sector energético a que se sumen a nosotros para crear nuevas formas de organización económica, avance técnico y apoyo a una normativa pública que incentive decisiones de sostenibilidad y equidad en todos los sectores, cubriendo las necesidades básicas de cada uno, y permitiendo al planeta, nuestro único hogar, florecer en toda su diversidad.
Julia Marton-Lefèvre Ashok Khosla
La Directora General de la UICN Presidente de la UICN

Stokstad_2009

“The solution is quite simple if governments really want to protect bluefin tuna,” says Wakao Hanaoka, tuna expert at Greenpeace Japan, a leading environmental non-governmental organisation. “Trading in the species must be based on its natural lifecycle and not on short-term profits alone,” he adds.

Bluefin tuna is the latest addition to Japan’s controversial list of imports of endangered marine life. At the top of the list is whale meat, which the East Asian economic superpower is famously known to hunt under the guise of research, or ‘scientific whaling’ – a term it coined – since commercial whaling was banned in 1986.

Japan’s scientific whaling continues despite a threat to the whaling population as well as dolphin catches that are also bitterly criticised by environmentalists and most Western countries calling for stringent regulatory measures.

Indeed, Japan’s resistance to a proposed ban on the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna – found throughout the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea – by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is seen as pitting scientific evidence, which confirms drastic dwindling of stocks, against commercial and political interests.

CITES is an international agreement among governments that seeks to ensure that international trade in wild animal and plant species does not threaten their survival. Its latest meeting, held in March in Doha, ended without the participating countries, including Japan, adopting any new measures to protect marine species.

Japan, supported by votes from developing countries that were, according to media reports during the CITES meeting, due to heavy lobbying by the Japanese delegation, successfully defeated the proposal to ban international trade in bluefin tuna.

Critics say the support for Japan at CITES has shown again how institutions that were established to support a sustainable harvest of natural resources are now buckling under political pressure.

Based on scientific data Atlantic bluefin biomass is now down to almost 50,000 tons – way below the 250,000 tons recorded in 1975, threatening its existence. The International Committee of the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), an inter-governmental fisheries organisation, has been accused of allowing overfishing.

Japan’s lucrative market attracts 30,000 tons of the northern and southern bluefin tuna catch from total catches of 36,000 tons per year – equivalent to one percent of the total tuna trade in the world.

Professor Masayuki Komatsu, ocean and marine researcher at the Tokyo- based National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies and former head of the government whaling delegation to the International Whaling Commission, says he is “disappointed at the stubborn stance of Japan on the tuna issue.”

“Japan has to respect proposals to stop overfishing of tuna in the Atlantic and Mediterranean seas. Japan must forgo its short-term goals and stick to the principle of sustainable use of natural resources,” he explains.

Bluefin tuna or ‘o-toro’ in Japanese, sushi and sashimi are raw fish dishes that are considered high-end and are available at restaurants for as much as 10 U.S. dollars apiece.

The Japanese Fisheries Ministry acknowledges the need to protect the species but vehemently argues the only way to do this is for Japan to enforce strictly its management of tuna imports.

“All bluefin tuna imports must carry a license that indicates its source and adherence to ICCAT quotas. This assures sustainable management,” says Kenji Fukui, a fisheries ministry official in charge of the tuna trade.

Professor Komatsu explains such a position has eroded a bid by the Japanese government to build an image of Japan as a leader in global environment protection.

He adds that unlike whaling, tuna is not part of the traditional Japanese diet and therefore the government should not turn the issue into a national one.

“For decades, before the Japanese economic boom, the most popular fish was flounder or mackerel. Tuna, especially ‘toro’, was eaten on special occasions which were not regular,” he says.

Ironically, as prices go sky high, the old pattern might be emerging once again.

Issei Kurimoto, chef at Sushi Bar located in the fashionable Ginza shopping district in this capital, agrees. “The prime bluefin sushi is extremely expensive, which is turning away regular customers,” he says.

Little wonder preference has shifted to other kinds of fish, he says. In fact, Kurimoto adds, he is not against the ban on bluefin catches if scientific data shows the depletion of stocks.

Sushi does not only mean bluefin tuna anyway, he says with a grin. “The Japanese public will just turn to another kind of fish if tuna is not available,” he adds.

Such an attitude, while welcome, will not save the critically endangered bluefin tuna.

For instance, China, a key player in the protection of the species, is also turning into a lucrative market as individual income levels rise and the Japanese sushi increasingly appeals to Chinese appetite.

Rather than adopt a total ban on tuna imports, the Japanese fishing industry is also banking on tuna farming as a resource. But that is turning into an uphill task given its huge expense.

The high cost of the feed—15 kilograms of food to grow tuna to the size of one kilogram – has set back the project being undertaken by Kinki University in western Japan.

Such measure, says Komatsu, does not support efforts to protect the species from extinction. “The key to sustainable trading is to stop when there is a danger to the resource – and that is what is needed now,” he says.

Actor´s efforts to save tuna

It was when a third of the cinema audience sprang to its feet shouting at us, and my wife, fearing violence, slipped out of the side door, that I began wondering if we had taken on more than we could handle. The screening last month of The End of the Line in Malta, the centre of the Mediterranean bluefin tuna industry, was the closest I have yet come to a riot since I first pointed out that overfishing is killing our oceans.

Making the case for a ban on the international bluefin trade in a country that earns £87m a year from supplying sushi to Japan was always going to be like telling the barnyard cats that mice were off the menu.

Though I knew that Malta’s prosperous tuna ranchers wouldn’t enjoy being told they were making their precious fish extinct, the fury of their reaction took me by surprise. Were the figures right? What business did we British have in talking about banning trade in tuna? What about banning trade in north Atlantic cod, eh? Eh? I remember shouting back, “Sit down, shut up and I’ll answer your questions,” but the Maltese tuna men were not in the mood to listen.

I cast my mind back a year, to one of the film’s first screenings, held for schoolchildren at the Sundance film festival in Utah. The opening question had a stunning directness: “When I’m your age, will there still be fish in the sea?” I only wished the teenager who asked it could have seen my Maltese audience. It would have shown him what we’re up against.

LOW-BUDGET documentary features don’t usually get this kind of reaction, but The End of the Line — a film based on my 2004 book of that name — is no ordinary documentary. It is a wake-up call about the decline of the world’s wild fish catches, alerting viewers to the imminent eradication of one of the planet’s great species, and showing them what can be done to stop it.

The bluefin tuna has been around for 400m years. An astonishing fish, it accelerates faster than a sports car and migrates across whole oceans. Unfortunately, its rich, marbled flesh has become one of the most prized delicacies on earth. In the past decade its population has fallen 60% through rampant illegal fishing. The stock is now on the verge of collapse and the WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) predicts that bluefin spawners will be virtually eradicated by 2012.

Although the bluefin is recognised as an endangered species — alongside the giant panda and the white rhino — large specimens continue to fetch thousands of pounds at auction and it is still served in restaurants across the world. Quotas limit the catch but scientific experts on population renewal rates point out these quotas have been set far too high and are, in any case, widely ignored and unenforced. Only last month, an attempt to give bluefin tuna real protection by bringing in an international trade ban failed spectacularly when signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species at Doha, Qatar, voted overwhelmingly against it. The night before the vote, the Japanese delegation threw a banquet for favoured guests. The pièce de résistance? Bluefin tuna sushi.

My own understanding of what has been happening to fish in the sea began, improbably, on a riverbank in Wales, many miles inland, where I caught a 23lb salmon. It was one of the last of a run of big spring fish that has now virtually died out. For all my pride at landing such a catch, I felt guilty because I discovered that the spring run had almost certainly declined, there and elsewhere, as a result of angling alone. If an angler could overfish a species with a fly or a spinner, I wondered, what was happening in the sea, where they used enormous trawls, long-lines and giant purse seine nets? As a journalist specialising in the environment, I decided to learn more and publish my findings in a book.

I BEGAN my journey in the once-great flatfish port of Lowestoft, in Suffolk, where the biggest employer is now the fisheries lab, set up to ensure there would always be fish to catch. I went to Bonavista in Newfoundland, where catching a cod attracts a fine of $500 and where the locals, subsidised not to fish, long only to return to their trawlers. I watched the last bluefin tuna of the Mediterranean being rounded up illegally by purse seiners and spotter aircraft because of negligent enforcement. And I went to Dakar, in Senegal, where one of Africa’s most productive marine ecosystems is being mined out by subsidised European fleets. I also saw vast ships catching blue whiting in unsustainable quantities to be turned into fishmeal for salmon farms.

My journey taught me that we face a choice. Do we go with the rare examples of good, sustainable practice: the dazzling marine reserves of New Zealand, or the way fishing is regulated in Iceland or in the United States’ waters in Alaska? Or do we go on as we are and leave our grandchildren with nothing wild to eat but jellyfish and plankton?

THE book’s questions seemed to strike a chord — reviews were favourable, sales encouraging — but it was only when I joined up with the director Rupert Murray begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting and the producers Claire Lewis, Christopher Hird and George Duffield to turn the book into a documentary that things really started to take off.

I have mercifully forgotten most of the process of making the film, how we all fell out with each other at least once during the two-year process of filming and editing and how our New York publicists got paid the most for doing the least. Now I mainly remember the redeeming moments, such as the day when we had run out of money with only half the film shot and George Duffield, our co-producer and fundraiser, rang up and asked which country I was in. He had been offered $600,000 by the foundation of Ted Waitt, the Gateway computer founder, but the deal had to be tied up within 48 hours.

Independent film-making is a roller-coaster ride. Ted Danson, our Hollywood narrator, said yes first time, charged nothing and has tirelessly supported the film. A big Hollywood studio talked to us for months about distributing the film across Europe and then backed out. Instead, we had to distribute it ourselves, which in Britain turned out to be an extraordinary success after Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown came to the launch and tweeted about it.

When Julian Metcalfe, founder of the sandwich chain Pret A Manger, saw it he undertook to serve only tuna caught by selective methods. Several influential customers of the Japanese restaurant chain Nobu — including Ben and Kate Goldsmith, Zac Goldsmith, Colin and Livia Firth — called on its owner and chef to drop bluefin from his menus. The actress Greta Scacchi lent her glamorous figure to the enterprise, posing naked with an enormous cod, and followed up this act of courage by joining me on a visit to the fisheries minister, Huw Irranca-Davies, who soon announced his support for a bluefin trade ban.

Support for a ban rolled in — thanks to our other big benefactor, Erica Knie of the marine environmental campaign group MarViva — from Kofi Annan and Javier Solana, the former secretaries-general of the United Nations, the actor Michael Douglas and, thanks to to the US and Madrid-based group Oceana, the narrator of our Spanish-language version, the singer and ocean activist Miguel Bosé. The film was screened at Clarence House, No 10 Downing Street, the department of the environment and in Brussels, where I debated reform with the fisheries commissioner, Joe Borg, who is Maltese. We went on to screen it at the UN general assembly and at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas meeting in Recife, Brazil.

Suddenly we had 10,000 friends on Facebook, a virtual army of people angry about our destruction of the sea. Somewhere along the way we had become campaigners. Somehow, we had done what environmental groups had failed to do before: we had made people care about fish in the same way as they do about other animals. And we had become a force that European politicians could not ignore.

ALL that people power cried out to be harnessed. We decided to focus on white-tablecloth restaurants, where so many of the endangered fish are eaten. We set up a restaurant review website, fish2fork, that ranked restaurants on the sustainability of what they served. About 15% of the restaurants we reviewed changed their menus as a result and Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons put his sourcing policy for fish online.

Two of the producers, George Duffield and Chris Gorell Barnes, started thinking even bigger. The film says that according to UN law, the sea belongs to us citizens, so why shouldn’t we claim it back? Why not raise money from citizens with interests in the sea, from yachtsmen to divers, shipping lines, retailers and even oil and gas companies?

The idea of a foundation crystallised rapidly after David Miliband, the foreign secretary, announced proposals to make everything within a 200-mile radius around a bunch of obscure islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean into the largest marine reserve in the world. We knew there were obstacles, but we also knew the benefit a marine reserve would bring to the reefs of the Chagos archipelago and the Indian Ocean.

However, the British government would not have the money to police a reserve. So I urged George and Chris to use their idea of a foundation — to be called the Blue Marine Foundation — to raise the money.

A week after our confrontation in Malta, I went to Doha for the culmination of our bluefin campaign, the three-yearly summit of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. We had high hopes: the EU and the United States had confirmed their support for a bluefin trade ban, and wasn’t this a tribute to the power of the case made in our film? Yes and yes.

But they did nothing to back this with diplomacy — until too late. Though Norway, a fishing nation, accepted the opinion of a specially convened panel of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation that the bluefin had declined so far that it met the criteria for a trade ban, other influential fishing nations, such as South Africa and Australia, had not been persuaded and were worried about the precedent that might be set for stocks of other fish in their waters.

Japan, the world’s hungriest bluefin customer, had clearly worked for months to nourish their fears and, when the vote was held, we suffered a crushing defeat.

We had not failed utterly, however. We never thought at the outset that we would get as far as persuading the EU and America to back a bluefin trade ban. And even though that proposal has been defeated, Monaco might bring the proposal back again in three years’ time. That, in turn, will keep up the pressure on Japan. Meanwhile, the Mediterranean countries will be under new pressure to agree science-based quotas and crack down on illegal fishing. Doha was a setback, though one that made our film sadly even more relevant than before.

Then the phone rang. It was George Duffield. He said: “We’ve got the money.” The Blue Marine Foundation had just received the promise of several million pounds to help to create the largest marine reserve in the world, provided the British government could iron out the diplomatic problems. The funding would make it possible to throw out the tuna fleets that fish in those waters.

There is more to do — persuading people to avoid eating endangered fish, getting the film distributed in China and Japan, which the message does not yet seem to have reached. But our little army of the converted is growing daily … and it does look, finally, as though someone is listening.

Ocean Giants worth up to $100,000 each

Bluefin tuna are remarkable creatures, able to dive to 3,000ft and migrate thousands of miles each year across the ocean. Since the second world war, industrialised fishing techniques and growing fleets of large fishing vessels have steadily reduced the population of these ocean giants, bringing them precariously close to collapse. Only about 41,000 reproductively mature bluefin are left in the western Atlantic, down from about 222,600 in 1970.

Biology Atlantic bluefin tuna can live for 40 years, grow to 14ft long and weigh up to 1,600lb. They have two known spawning grounds — the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean. Their annual return to these regions makes protection of spawning areas an urgent priority.

Older and larger female fish produce more eggs than younger ones. A 15- to 20-year-old spawning female produces up to 45m eggs, whereas a five-year-old may produce only 5m. So protection of these giant females is extremely important for the future of the species.

History Archeological evidence shows that humans have hunted bluefin tuna since the 7th century BC.

The Romans and Phoenicians fished for it with traps and hand lines. Fishing practices remained essentially unchanged and relatively few of the fish were taken until the 20th century, when the introduction of canning technology created high demand for bluefin tuna.

Fishermen, driven by the potential for higher profits, began using larger purse seines, harpoons and longer open-ocean fishing lines. Since the introduction of sonar, radar and spotter planes, commercial fishing has caught bluefin tuna faster than nature can replace them.

In the 1980s, the Japanese market for sushi and sashimi exploded, driving the value of these fish even higher. The largest fish are exported directly to Japan for sale; others are caught for tuna farms in the Mediterranean. Here juvenile bluefin tuna are raised to a marketable size and larger bluefin tuna are held for a few months to increase the fat content in their flesh to command a higher market value. Prime bluefin tuna can sell for more than $100,000 per fish.

Unfortunately, these “farms” don’t breed the fish; they just enhance the value of ones caught by fishermen.

Gone fishing: Masanori Miyahara, head of Japan's delegation and the country's top fisheries official, holds a news conference with Patrick van Klaveren, head of the Monaco delegation, during a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Doha on March 18. AP Photo

Seafood policy seen negating moral authority

First published by The Japan Times, April 7, 2010.

OSAKA — Six months before Japan hosts a major U.N. conference on biodiversity, the government and major corporations involved in the issue are conducting a series of events to raise public awareness about threats to the world’s ecosystems and what can be done to save natural habitats.

But global criticism over Japan’s stance on whales, dolphins and tuna has led environmental activists abroad to question if Tokyo can lead in biodiversity preservation.

Some Japanese nongovernmental organizations also wonder if incidents ranging from clashes earlier this year between antiwhaling activists and the whaling fleet to Japan’s role a few weeks ago in successfully preventing a ban on bluefin tuna trade will affect the government’s ability to successfully host the October biodiversity conference.

“Japan’s government has no moral authority on biodiversity issues,” said Ric O’Berry, the American dolphin activist featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove,” which details the annual dolphin hunt in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture.

“The Fisheries Agency’s actions on dolphins, whales and bluefin tuna seriously undermine science-based management and international accords to protect marine life,” he said, adding that such actions will damage Japan’s credibility at the COP10 biodiversity conference in Nagoya, where the United Nations hopes to conclude an agreement on biodiversity preservation goals.

Just a few weeks after “The Cove” won the Academy Award for best documentary and created a backlash in Japan among those who see eating dolphin meat as a part of the country’s traditional food culture, Japanese delegates led a successful effort at the Convention of the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora meeting in Doha to prevent a ban on the international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Japan consumes about 80 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna. The population of Western Atlantic bluefin tuna dropped 82 percent between 1957 and 2007 while Eastern Atlantic bluefin declined 74 percent, according to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

Tokyo argued for proper management of stocks under ICCAT instead of a ban.

Following the meeting in Doha, environmental journalist Charles Clover begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting, writing in the March 28 edition of the influential British newspaper The Sunday Times, called for a boycott of Japanese firms like Mitsubishi Corp. that trade in bluefin tuna and for sanctions against Japanese airlines transporting it.

“In my view, Japan’s victory in Doha was an enormous diplomatic mistake, based on prejudice rather than principle, and it has not gone unnoticed by the public. Japan’s government knows that, sooner or later, it simply has to address the issue of sustainability, but nobody wants to be the first to change such a hoary plank of foreign policy as Japan’s right to eat all of the fish,” Clover wrote.

Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd activist group, also urged an NGO boycott of COP10 in a statement released last week.

“What this meeting will do is lend legitimacy to Japan, arguably one of the most irresponsible nations on Earth for the practice of overexploitation of species,” Watson wrote. “I appeal to the large NGOs like Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, Friends of the Earth, etc. to not attend this meeting and to not lend legitimacy to this charade in Nagoya.”

2010 has been designated the international year of biodiversity, and international attention on Japanese policies toward such endangered species comes at a time when the government is stepping up domestic efforts to prepare for COP10.

Last month, at a public expo in Osaka to promote the conference, more than 100 national and local government bodies, NGOs and businesses passed out information on the sustainable use of forests, protecting endangered species in Japan like the Blakiston’s fish owl and the dugong, various environmentally friendly products and business practices, and the efforts that local governments are making to preserve biodiversity.

The Osaka event was held two days after the CITES conference, but Japanese officials said the tuna row would not affect the Nagoya parley.

“I’m not worried about Japan’s actions over bluefin tuna affecting our leadership at COP10 because its purpose is to reach agreement on biodiversity preservation as a whole. There are other international conferences and treaties for protecting specific species,” said Daizaburo Kuroda, a senior councilor for the Environment Ministry who attended the Osaka expo.

Between now and October, the government, major NGOs and businesses will hold nearly a dozen seminars around the country related to COP10 and biodiversity.

At COP10, preservation of natural habitats through the creation of sanctuaries will be a major topic of discussion. For terrestrial life, Japan will seek recognition for the Satoyama Initiative, which aims to protect not only pristine wilderness but also conserve farmlands and forests that were developed for agriculture.

COP10 is still six months away, which gives the current criticism plenty of time to die down. But if it doesn’t, the government and the U.N. delegates who show up in Nagoya may find that international political pressure due to the efforts of activists could grow to the point where they are forced to spend time dealing with the specific issues they raise.

Yoshimasa Harano of CBD Shimin Net said the government may have to deal with international criticism over whales, dolphins and tuna in Nagoya.

“There’s no direct link between COP10 and CITES. But Japan’s actions over tuna in particular could likely leave a bad impression on delegates to the former conference,” Harano said. “In addition, the issue of (Japan’s policies toward) whales and dolphins in particular has garnered media attention worldwide because clashes between Japanese whalers and Sea Shepherd and the film ‘The Cove’ have created a negative image of Japan.”

Eric Johnston is Staff writer at The Japan Times.

School of bluefin tuna. Photo courtesy of: NOAA.

First published on Mongabay.com, April 5, 2010.

As a child I read about the near-extinction of the American bison. Once the dominant species on America’s Great Plains, I remember books illustrating how train-travelers would set their guns on open windows and shoot down bison by the hundreds as the locomotive sped through what was left of the wild west. The American bison plunged from an estimated 30 million to a few hundred at the opening of the 20th century.

When I read about the bison’s demise I remember thinking, with the characteristic superiority of a child, how such a thing could never happen today, that society has, in a word, ‘progressed’.

Grown-up now, the world has made me wiser: last month the international organization CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) struck down a ban on the Critically Endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna. The story of the Atlantic bluefin tuna is a long and mostly irrational one—that is if one looks at the Atlantic bluefin from a scientific, ecologic, moral, or common-sense perspective.

Since 1970 the Atlantic bluefin tuna’s population has dropped by 80 percent due, like the bison, to one reason: overharvesting. Classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List, the ‘management’ of the tuna has long been in the hands of an organization known as ICCAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas), yet the organization has continuously ignored the advice of its own scientists. For years, when researchers would come up with a fishing quota based on population estimates, ICCAT would double it. On top of that widespread illegal fishing year-after-year worsened the fish’s situation. Last year, ICCAT’s scientists for the first time recommended a total ban on Atlantic bluefin tuna fishing. But again, ICCAT ignored their own advice and instead set a quota of 13,500 tons.

After ICCAT’s repeated failures—and the tuna’s continuing decline—the duty now fell to world nations, through the organization CITES, to bring sense to the free-of-all, which, if allowed to continue, would lead to complete a population crash and quite possible extinction for the embattled fish. But last month CITES failed to garner the two-thirds majority needed to pass the ban: the vote lost soundly with 20 voting for a ban, 68 voting against, and 30 nations abstaining.

The reason? Greed. The fish is worth a lot, at least to one country. Three-fourths of the catch is shipped to Japan for sushi, and the scarcer the Atlantic bluefin tuna becomes—i.e. the closer it is to the brink of existence—the more money a single fish is worth. Currently, the Atlantic bluefin tuna trade is estimated at 7 billion US dollars a year with just one fish fetching up to 100,000 US dollars on the market. The CITES vote shows that when greed demands extinction, we have yet to stifle its siren sound.
But it’s not just the Atlantic bluefin tuna that CITES failed. Numerous species of sharks caught-up in the ‘finning’ trade were also left unprotected.

Humans, like all species, consume, yet unlike most other species we also waste—and the greater our population becomes the more we are willing to waste. In the case of ‘shark finning’, sharks are caught around the world, their fins chopped off, and then the shark itself is thrown back into the water to die. It’s a gruesome, barbaric process, but most of all it is startlingly wasteful: sharks are thrown overboard simply because their meat is not worth enough for fishermen to keep. All this death and waste is left unchecked in order to produce vast quantities of the Asian delicacy (barely a ‘delicacy’ anymore)—’shark-fun soup’—for the wealthy in China and Japan. It is estimated that 26 to 73 million sharks are killed every year for their fins alone.

Not surprisingly, this trade has helped sink shark populations worldwide. In just 15 years sharks have been devastated in the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico: with a 90 percent drop in populations. Some shark species in the Mediterranean have plunged by 97 percents. But the decline also global: shark populations have dropped by 75 percent in the northwestern Atlantic over the same time period. To date 32 percent of open ocean sharks and rays are threatened with extinction.

These dire statistics, pushed sharks to the center of the CITES meeting. However, out of eight species of shark, not one of them received enough votes to garner protection. The porbeagle shark actually won enough votes, but Asian countries were able to force a second vote just before the meeting closed that left the porbeagle, like its cousins, unprotected.

As top predators both sharks and Atlantic bluefin tuna play an important role in the ecosystem by controlling prey species populations and thereby also affecting their prey’s prey. Without sharks and tuna, the whole marine ecosystem—like Yellowstone was without wolves—will likely go topsy-turvy.

Japan is the villain of this piece—the train tourist with gun resting on the window sill leisurely blasting away—since it repeatedly lobbied hard against any marine species receiving any protection or increased regulations.

China, Russia, and Canada were Japan’s willing accomplices. While Russia and China alliance with Japan may not be surprising, Canada’s is, especially considering both the US and the EU supported bans. But Canada has become an environmental pariah: one could argue, in fact, that Canada’s current government makes the Bush Administration look almost environmental. Joining up with Japan at CITES is only Canada’s most recent snub to global environmental sustainability.

The interesting thing about Japan’s behavior is that its government is fully aware that one day soon it will no longer be able to fish (or eat) Atlantic bluefin tuna. Either a ban will actually go through or, more likely, there simply will be no more fish to catch. Given the situation it would be a far wiser move for Japan’s economy to protect the fish now, so that in coming decades it can still consume the Atlantic bluefin tuna in small amounts, charging consumers a premium. However, instead of a sustainable environment producing a sustainable economy, Japan has chosen greed, and greed by definition knows no future, only the present. Waste is no different.

The near-demise of the American bison was also due to a combination of greed and waste: Americas slaughtered millions of bison both for their skins and in a truly cruel government program to starve out Native Americans. Prior to European arrival in North America, bison were likely long managed by Native Americans through hunting and burning prairies. Arrival of European disease decimated Native populations however, and in turn some researchers believe the bison population boomed and even expanded its range, that is, until European settlers made their way into the west.

Despite this long history, the story of the American bison actually ended happily…well somewhat. Thanks to the efforts of several conservationists, most notably James “Scotty” Philip, the American bison didn’t vanish entirely from the Earth—a possibility that may seem hard to imagine today, but a hundred years ago was quite likely.

Instead the American bison survives today to roam…America’s vanished prairie. One can find American bison in protected areas in small populations—nothing like what once roamed America’s west. Driving across America, however, one is most likely to see bison not in the wild, but behind fences as farm animals. These are not considered by the government ‘true’ bison, since genetics testing shows that many of the ‘farmed’ bison have interbred widely with cattle.

This, very well, may be the same fate for bluefin tuna and sharks: remnants of the population being farmed for humanity’s ever-expanding appetite, perhaps crossbred with other tuna or shark species, or simply genetically modified to produce more meat—or in the case of sharks, bigger fins—per fish.

So, when it comes to human greed and waste, do not delude yourself: we will knowingly exploit a megafauna species—the Atlantic bluefin tuna, sharks, or the American bison—to extinction (or a fate nearly as bad) today, just as we did yesterday. We have not progressed, but refusing to learn from the past, like the ignorant, we are doomed to repeat it. Of course, unlike the ignorant, we repeat it with the full knowledge of our consequences, yet not even this stops us.

Where this cycle will end, I don’t know. But it’s very likely that one or two hundred years from now the oceans will look as different and lonely as today’s western America would appear to Lewis and Clark: little remaining but the absence of what was.