Tuna is Becoming Extinct

[Friendly]

I noticed that the price for canned tuna has gone up quite a bit recently, so I had a look at the related articles on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunnus

It's largely the fault of Japanese sashimi and sushi consumption and the total disregard for the survival of the respective fish populations.
Examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_bluefin_tuna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_bluefin_tuna

Well done, humanity.
We really are the scourge of the planet, there is no denying it.

[evil_ash_xero]

Japan...and Asia in general, seem to like to make things extinct, or hunting near-extinct animals(for their balls or whatever). It's fucked up.

*Edited to not look so dumb.

[replayme]

there's a documentary about this...

THE END OF THE LINE.

http://endoftheline.com/

[Skykid]

There's also a film about Japanese dolphin massacring called the Cove.

They better leave the fucking tuna alone though. I like tuna.

[drauch]

Yeah, this has been an issue for quite awhile now. Mankind will never learn...Gotta eat that fish, though!

[Blackbird]

Wow, news to me. I would have thought most all fisheries would have adjusted their harvesting to a sustainable level by now. If they catch the fish into extinction, there's no more fish for anyone to eat, and no more fishing business. I don't care how greedy they are, you can't profit if there's nothing left to catch. Even just looking at it from a purely business standpoint (setting aside the obvious moral obligation to keep a species alive) I'm surprised more isn't being done. It's not as if overfishing is a new problem, either.

[Khan]

There's also a film about Japanese dolphin massacring called the Cove.

They better leave the fucking tuna alone though. I like tuna.

Damn straight! love me a tuna mayo sarny for lunch nothing better, well besides chicken ;p

[CMoon]

There's also a fantastic book (for you literate types) called 'The Empty Ocean' by Richard Ellis. Basically a historical and scientific account of the history of mankinds' annihilation of sea life. It reads the same as Bury my heart at wounded knee. Recommended.

[Moniker]

I was under the impression there were tuna farms, or whatever you'd call them. Like with lobster and salmon. Color me puzzled.

Edit: Oh. Tuna take too long to mature to keep the price down. Although, that still doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Cattle must take at least 5 years to get to prime rib status.

[CMoon]

There is both wild caught and farmed. Farmed fish has its own problems, but I wonder if this is needlessly complicated a simple issue: If we are going to feed huge populations of humans, we must manage the populations of animals and plants we consume. That the fishing industry has gone on as long as it has, effectively in a 19th century mode, is rather surprising. I'm pretty sure in our lifetime we will see a substantial change, but at what point of mass extinction?

[cools]

Mmmm tuna.

[Evilmaxwar]

Reminds me of Easter Island. There used to be trees there. But then the folks living on the island were cutting them all. At some point there was none left and their society pretty much died afterward. All that is left now are their statues.

Funny thing is the person that was cutting the last tree had to know what he was doing, that it was the last one. But he still cut it lol.
Humans...

[CIT]

hunt extinct animals

lolwut

[Ed Oscuro]

I've known about this for some time. I almost went to eat at a local sushi place (a good one too) that has tuna on the menu, but I was too late for take-out. (Cue Agent 47 line here, I guess!)

Make no bones about it, raw tuna slightly pan-singed on both sides is very tasty. (I'm not aware of differences between the various species, though I am trying to go out of my way to avoid tuna in general.)

Various signs point to our food chain being ready for collapse anytime, and even if it isn't, the factory farms a lot of people feed from require a pretty hellish status quo (from the animals' perspective). But if I starve myself, I won't be able to change anything. Best bet is just to exert pressure on markets and try to eat the range stuff when possible to promote good practices. I have been criticizing (or been meaning to criticize, at least!) the economists (and others) who try to say that the market will solve things like the bee colony collapse disorder (although Daniel Kuehn is making a separate, valid point, but one that would require me to disconnect the part of my brain that goes "it's the ecology, stupid" and remembers that the scientists can describe what will happen that the economists don't understand).

That Wikipedia article on Atlantic bluefin has a very interesting factoid - that tuna eat 10x fish per pound of their weight.

The NOAA explains enforcement of the Atlantic Tunas Convention Act (I still don't know if you can buy the stuff locally, though...that would be pretty odd.)
And ineffectual laws: You can't sell it, but...

Funny thing is the person that was cutting the last tree had to know what he was doing, that it was the last one. But he still cut it lol.
Humans...

That's a fascinating observation, thanks. Although I suppose it might be the case that they didn't know (i.e., there were ten trees, and ten guys cutting them down on the same day), I wouldn't bet on it. In today's society, we don't even have the direct link of doing it. For the fisherman, if he saw the last of a fish and he could farm it, he would still do it, and say "time to get another job, I guess..." For the average person whose buying preferences dictate what the market can support commercially, though, there is always the "well, it can't be that bad" out of imperfect knowledge. (I prefer to be cautious, of course.)

[Blackbird]

I'm very concerned about the coming century. I can't help but imagine there will be a point in the near future where we (humanity) suddenly realize that our uncontrolled growth has exceeded the capacity of the Earth's resources to sustain our population. Everyone will point fingers and scream questions like "Why didn't you ensure food production could be sustainably scaled!?" and "Why did you hunt the tuna to extinction!?" but it will be too late. Humanity will run headlong into the brick wall of disaster. There will probably be a bunch of shitty, petty wars over the last scraps of fertile land (which will probably be destroyed and squandered when the bombs drop) in a futile effort to secure food resources. Meanwhile, there will be a mass starvation of the poorest, least advantaged class of people that don't have the wealth or influence to obtain scarce foodstuffs.

Equilibrium will only be reattained after the mass death of many people brings the population down to a manageable level again.

[Estebang]

Alternatively, we could start eating plankton burgers.

And learn to love it.

[nZero]

Alternatively, we could start eating plankton burgers.

And learn to love it.

I was hoping for some nice Soylent Green.

[Evilmaxwar]

I'm very concerned about the coming century. I can't help but imagine there will be a point in the near future where we (humanity) suddenly realize that our uncontrolled growth has exceeded the capacity of the Earth's resources to sustain our population. Everyone will point fingers and scream questions like "Why didn't you ensure food production could be sustainably scaled!?" and "Why did you hunt the tuna to extinction!?" but it will be too late. Humanity will run headlong into the brick wall of disaster. There will probably be a bunch of shitty, petty wars over the last scraps of fertile land (which will probably be destroyed and squandered when the bombs drop) in a futile effort to secure food resources. Meanwhile, there will be a mass starvation of the poorest, least advantaged class of people that don't have the wealth or influence to obtain scarce foodstuffs.

Equilibrium will only be reattained after the mass death of many people brings the population down to a manageable level again.

May I add one more thing to this: Cannibalism, lots of it.

[replayme]

There's also a film about Japanese dolphin massacring called the Cove.

They better leave the fucking tuna alone though. I like tuna.

Yeah, I saw that.

It almost makes you realise the futility of it all... You can never change people, so why try?

The only reason as to why people ever change is because of their survival instinct and because of their own selfish interests...

[Acid King]

The NOAA explains enforcement of the Atlantic Tunas Convention Act (I still don't know if you can buy the stuff locally, though...that would be pretty odd.)
And ineffectual laws: You can't sell it, but...

Incidentally, NOAA turned around and sold the tuna they mention in that press release.

I haven't read much of her work, but you may want to check out some of Elinor Ostrom's research, Ed. She's done a lot of work on how resources are managed and how to improve regulatory effectiveness.

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/51/1922 ... 342726323c

[system11]

It's very unpopular in some areas to point this out - but this is a direct result of our species inability to stop breeding like rabbits. We will eat the world to death.

[hzt]

I'm eating tuna right now.

This makes it even more delicious.

[Friendly]

It's very unpopular in some areas to point this out - but this is a direct result of our species inability to stop breeding like rabbits. We will eat the world to death.

You are absolutely right. Special thanks to certain religions who continue to tell their members to "be fruitful, and multiply", with total disregard to the dwindling amount of resources available on this small planet.

[neorichieb1971]

I have always wondered why governments don't at least tackle population problems. At least a few countries should have adopted a cap on population by now. The UK doesn't have a breeding problem but it has an immigration problem. The places these people immigrate from just produce millions more. Its a silly situation. Yet instead of tackling the issue of how many people there are, the governments extend the infrastructure to support even more people. Its stupid.

[Evilmaxwar]

Our current economic system needs growth to sustain itself. Remove the growth and the thing crashes. Talk about a mess.

[replayme]

I have always wondered why governments don't at least tackle population problems. At least a few countries should have adopted a cap on population by now. The UK doesn't have a breeding problem but it has an immigration problem. The places these people immigrate from just produce millions more. Its a silly situation. Yet instead of tackling the issue of how many people there are, the governments extend the infrastructure to support even more people. Its stupid.

you should watch Idiocracy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk

[Ed Oscuro]

The NOAA explains enforcement of the Atlantic Tunas Convention Act (I still don't know if you can buy the stuff locally, though...that would be pretty odd.)
And ineffectual laws: You can't sell it, but...

Incidentally, NOAA turned around and sold the tuna they mention in that press release.

I haven't read much of her work, but you may want to check out some of Elinor Ostrom's research, Ed. She's done a lot of work on how resources are managed and how to improve regulatory effectiveness.

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/51/1922 ... 342726323c

Yeah, I had read they sold it, though I'll read the news story even so (three strikes?). Thanks for the paper.

I actually had passed up watching two TED talks the other day, but I guess I'd better save them now:

Paul Gilding: The Earth is Full

It takes a good crisis to get us going. When we feel fear and we fear loss we are capable of quite extraordinary things. (Paul Gilding)

Jeremy Jackson: How we wrecked the ocean

It’s not about the fish; it’s not about the pollution; it’s not about the climate change. It’s about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today. (Jeremy Jackson)

It is true that, as Evilmaxwar says, our current economic systems bet on an expanding population to sustain itself. Besides resource and space constraints, I think that there may be some effects of increasing automation (and AI) that could put a stop to the utility of more people, though.

I don't think we need to be completely gloomy here: It is an interesting fact that individual families, are having fewer children in relation to how well-off they are. This does not appear to be merely a function of living in a well-off nation, but a reflection of how each person is doing. So, sooner or later, we may find that the public reality pushes governments to reflect this new reality.

Unfortunately a lot of the current macroeconomic thinking is totally incompatible with this. Inflation only gets you so far in losing the bite of deficits; if you have more people to share duties towards a deficit, it can quickly lose its bite (as happened to the deficit left after WWII; expanding population and expanding growth meant that the average person lost most of the "burden" of the deficit).

[replayme]

It takes a good crisis to get us going. When we feel fear and we fear loss we are capable of quite extraordinary things. (Paul Gilding)

which is probably the only time when people ever want to change.

[Khan]

It's very unpopular in some areas to point this out - but this is a direct result of our species inability to stop breeding like rabbits. We will eat the world to death.

You are absolutely right. Special thanks to certain religions who continue to tell their members to "be fruitful, and multiply", with total disregard to the dwindling amount of resources available on this small planet.

I dont think religion has anything to do with it fact is man is born to spread his seed and as men we are programmed to pretty much inseminate, the main issues lie in uneducated communities/countrys where they have no jobs no education and just sit at home all day doing the dirty. It would be hypocritical of me to say this problem is limited to places like Afrika and other 3rd world countries but it isnt. The dole dossing cun* who lives a few doors opposite from our house has 7 kids and all he does is sit at home all day drinking stella.....

[replayme]

It's very unpopular in some areas to point this out - but this is a direct result of our species inability to stop breeding like rabbits. We will eat the world to death.

You are absolutely right. Special thanks to certain religions who continue to tell their members to "be fruitful, and multiply", with total disregard to the dwindling amount of resources available on this small planet.

I dont think religion has anything to do with it fact is man is born to spread his seed and as men we are programmed to pretty much inseminate, the main issues lie in uneducated communities/countrys where they have no jobs no education and just sit at home all day doing the dirty. It would be hypocritical of me to say this problem is limited to places like Afrika and other 3rd world countries but it isnt. The dole dossing cun* who lives a few doors opposite from our house has 7 kids and all he does is sit at home all day drinking stella.....

Watch Idiocracy...