"Taugh Catch" TIMES article - Poor tunas...

The principal purpose of the article is to demonstrate the importance of animals (in this case tunas) for a balanced environment.
It gives us the reality of some relevant companies, particulary their struggle to catch Yellowfin and Bluefin, two endangered tuna species.
On one side there's the fisherman, who need to catch this species to survive, and on the other there's WWF, the scientists and even fishermans who defend sanctions to limit the number of fish getting caught.
The business is run like this: first tuna is caught, then washed, beheaded, gutted and packed with dry ice to be put on 10.30 a.m. Manila's flight, to be finally on the market in such places as Tokyo, Seattle or California. Mainly this kind of species come from Southern Filipines where the biggest and best tuna can cost around seven hundred dollars or more!
The way tuna is captured has changed through years; in the old days, fisherman used to go out to sea in the morning and by night came back with two or three tunas weighing each seventy kilos, whereas nowadays even to catch small kinds it's a two/three day trip out of sea due to the massive exploitation. The country which exhides normal ratings is Japan, a country which population much depends on the resources of the sea and, most importantly, of sushi restaurants. This country consumes 80% of the 6 000 tons of Bluefin caught worldwide, which is used for Sashimi.
Although the number of species has increased, the number of boats are rising, and so is the distance permitted to fish, invanding sometimes protected areas (and that's why contolling is so hard).
To solve this problem of possible extinction, European Commission advised a Global suspension of fishing Atlantic Bluefin tuna, which was denied by Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, France and Italy because they think the measure would be a disaster economically; this measure would give time to recover the species. The most worrying method to catch them is by dragging to shore (a technique invented on the Mediterranean in 1996) which is called "Tuna Ranching"; it consists on dragging the fish with aditives so the price gets higher the heavier it gets.
But, and though they're endangered, Bluefin isn't people's first choise; they first pick canned tuna, the Slipjack and Albacore species.
Another method used to produce more fish is Aquaculture, which experts say that is wasteful and expensive. The only system which seems to respect and protect these species are handline fisheres.
Summing up, the greed for tuna is hindering not just these species, but food chain too, and if this problem isn't solved, many animals will disapear quickly.

P.S. - As you may have notice, this summary wasn't really a summary. The reason why? Well, I think that all I've written matters. That's all.



This is how Americans sell canned tuna: