Dwindling numbers of endangered bluefin tuna has become the talking point of every concern people. The stock is staying low due to vast overfishing fueled by Japan’s insatiable sushi appetite. Conservation of this species is no forefront. International body has been formed to see the conservation of the bluefin tuna but they failed to do their job fairly. There was a small and clever innovation that may slow their decline: special hooks designed to help commercial fishing boats in the Gulf of Mexico avoid catching bluefin accidentally.
Fishing for bluefin in the gulf has been illegal since the 1980s, but longline boats often catch them without meaning to. Whether landed or released, the bluefin die. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that it will require the 50 longline vessels in the gulf to start using the hooks on May 5. Some fishermen are already using them, because they work so well.
The United States supports such a move, and the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species could have done so last year. But its members failed to give it a nod due to pressure from Japan. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, responsible for regulating the bluefin catch, has for years ignored the advice of its own scientists and set quotas unsustainably high.
