Tuna lover's dilemma: to eat or not to eat?

Markus Schmidt 'The Last Catch' movie
From fish yarn in the Mediterranean to tuna auction in Japan.
We travel around the world in 'The Last Catch', which sounds the depths of the (over)fishing industry -- a shady industry that is also desperately hard-pressed and experiencing corrupt growth, and which is threatening to destroy several species.
On the one side of patchy legislation we follow two groups of fishermen from the southern French coastal town of Séte.
Strong traditions characterise the two fishing groups, and while one of the family businesses is struggling to survive as a result of the stricter requirements of tuna fishing, the other is benefiting from a legal loophole.
A loophole, which allows otherwise illegal fishing in an area off the Libyan coast.
On the other side we join the environmental analyst Robert Mielgo, who is on an eternal mission to track overfishing in the many nooks and crannies of the Mediterranean and to make sure that there is no illegal fishing.
The fact that Mielgo himself started his career in the shady part of the industry and was one of the first people to fish off the Libyan coast just gives the story an extra twist.
Mielgo decided to switch sides from cynical fishing desperado to dedicated caretaker of environmental interests to make use of his knowledge of the industry in a race against time before the net closes in -- not least on the bluefin tuna, which might soon be extinct as a result of the headless overfishing in the world's oceans.

From National Geographic

In 1950, when tuna usually ended up in sandwiches and casseroles, the worldwide catch totaled an estimated 660,000 tons (600,000 metric tons).
Today that annual number has grown to more than 7 million tons (6.6 million metric tons) as the fish has gone gourmet and demand has soared.
The tuna boom has led to a host of concerns about the global fishing business, the state of our oceans, and the health impact of consuming an apex predator.

Which kind of tuna is best to buy is a complicated question because it involves a number of conflicting factors
"There are health concerns and culinary needs as well as choices based on sustainability," says Valerie Craig, who manages the National Geographic Seafood Decision Guide.
"How can you know about all those issues for every species?"

The first thing to know is that what we call tuna is actually several different kinds of fish.
Each has been affected by the fish's boom in popularity, but some are suffering drastic declines in population.
Bluefin tuna, for instance—featured in the March issue of National Geographic magazine—have been so overfished that they can't reproduce fast enough to replace what's caught. If you care about sustainability, they should be on your do-not-eat list.

How fish are caught also affects their sustainability.
Longlining can be especially devastating because it involves one line that can have 3,000 baited hooks and stretch for up to 50 miles (80.5 kilometers).
The hooks dangle at a depth between 328 feet (100 meters) and 492 feet (150 meters), where the largest tuna—such as the threatened bluefin—tend to swim.
The hooks also catch more than 80 kinds of nontargeted creatures, including endangered sea turtles, which often die on the line before the fishing vessel reels in the catch.

Going after the biggest fish also serves up health concerns to the people who eat them.
Big tunas like bluefin feed high on the food chain, so they ingest all the mercury that their prey and their prey's prey have taken in.
The U.S. government offers guidelines for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and small children, but other consumers are also concerned about how to balance the health benefits of eating fish against the adverse effects of mercury.
A good general rule: The bigger and older the fish, the bigger the risk.

The best advice is to study up before you go to the supermarket or a restaurant.
A good guide outlines the kinds of tuna, where they're fished, and what kinds of gear are used to catch them in different parts of the world.
It may also make suggestions about the greenest and healthiest choices.
In addition to the National Geographic guide, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch offers printable regional pocket guides as well as a smartphone app, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fishwatch website offers a list of seafood profiles that include tuna. These three sources are the best at keeping up with the latest changes in the tuna business.

Ultimatuna, the reproductive orgy of the tuna

To help sort through the issues, here's a basic rundown of the fish sold at supermarkets and restaurants in the U.S.:

In Cans or Pouches

Tuna labeled "light meat" is most likely skipjack, classified biologically as a cousin of true tunas.
Skipjack makes up about 70 percent of the canned or pouched tuna.
It's plentiful, so sustainability isn't an issue.
And it's cheap.
It's also a small, fast-maturing fish that's relatively low on the food chain, so the level of mercury in its flesh is low.
The downside to canned skipjack is that the texture is often mushy, and the taste can be aggressively fishy.
Albacore has a mild taste and produces firm chunks of meat.
It's labeled "white meat," and accounts for about 30 percent of the canned-tuna market.
Many albacore are now caught by longlining, so sustainability and mercury content may be issues.

At a Restaurant

With a firm texture and mild flavor, yellowfin tuna often appears on restaurant menus. It may be called "ahi," a Hawaiian word for tuna.
The term "ahi" is also used for bigeye, which may occasionally land on a menu when available.
More about them below.
A number of yellowfin populations are overfished now, so only pole-caught fish are considered a good choice for sustainability.
Mercury is a concern for those caught by longline.
 
At the Sushi Bar

The menu may not give much of a clue about the kind of tuna that's being served.
It may just say maguro—Japanese for tuna.
"The restaurant may be posting a standard menu and then serving whatever tuna they're able to get that day," says Craig.
In the U.S. that's often high-grade yellowfin.
Other words on the menu refer to the part of the fish the meat comes from.
A cut called "toro" was traditionally taken from the buttery soft belly of the bluefin tuna.
More specifically, otoro comes from the belly close to the head, while chutoro comes from the middle or back of the belly and is less fatty than otoro.
Click here to see a sushi diagram of the whole fish.
Bluefin is so rare these days that its price has soared.
A single bite-size piece of otoro could now set you back $25. So if your local sushi hangout offers two pieces of toro sushi for $10, that's not bluefin.
It may be bigeye, which is generally a better option in terms of sustainability.
It reproduces and matures quickly, and though some of its populations are declining, they're not as devastated worldwide as some others.
But bigeye tuna has a downside: Each fish can grow to more than 400 pounds (181 kilograms), so mercury can be a concern, depending on where and how they're caught.
Pole-caught bigeye tend to be younger, so the mercury level is likely to be lower.

Be Informed

Even if you've studied the tuna guides before you go out to eat, how do you know what's being prepared in the kitchen? Ask.
The servers may know about the kind of tuna or its place of origin; if not, they can check with the chef.
If the answer sounds fishy, maybe you should go for chicken instead of the chicken of the seas.

Links :

• National Geographic :  The Super Fish, unmatched for its athleticism and endurance, the bluefin tuna is equipped with an array of extraordinary adaptations.
• CBS : the king of sushi in trouble
• BBC : Tuna hearts 'affected by oil spill'

To the ends of the Earth - The first 40 years | Volvo Ocean Race

"If you are determined to be in the sailing game you have to do this Race" - Sir Peter Blake.

Sperm whales sleeping

Until just a few years ago, it was thought that sperm whales, like other cetaceans, only allowed one side of their brain to rest at a time, "keeping one eye open," as it were, in order to do "important things that require physical activity, such as coming to the surface to breathe or avoid predators," explains Nature's Matt Kaplan. 

"They never fully let their guard down." 

But in 2008, a team of researchers off the coast of northern Chile happened upon a pod of vertically bobbing sperm whales that seemed completely oblivious to its presence.

Not a single whale responded to the team's boat until one of them was accidentally nudged, at which point it awoke and fled, along with the rest of the group.

The team's findings suggest that, unlike other cetaceans, sperm whales appear to enter short, but periodic, bouts of sleep throughout the day — an observation that Kaplan says could hint that sperm-whales are actually "the least sleep-dependent mammals known."

Time-lapse video shows how quickly older Arctic Sea ice is disappearing

The winter ice pack in the Arctic was once dominated by old, thick ice.
Today, very little old ice remains.

This animation shows maps of sea ice age from 1987 through the end of October 2013.

Age class 1 means "first-year ice," which is ice that formed in the most recent winter.

The oldest ice (9+) is ice that is more than 9 years old.

Animation by NOAA climate.gov, based on research data provided by Mark Tschudi, CCAR, University of Colorado.

From Huffington Post

Take a second and watch older Arctic sea ice -- represented by white and lighter colors -- expand and retreat in this animation.
By the end of the time-lapse, it's strikingly clear that older sea ice has declined dramatically since 1987.
Scientists refer to older ice as "multi-year" ice, meaning that it has survived at least one summer melting season and is thicker than younger ice.
In this video, the older sea ice is represented by the lighter colors, with the color white signaling ice that is more than nine years old.
"Wind and ocean circulation patterns are conspiring with a warmer climate to reduce the amount of year-round (multi-year) ice, transforming the remaining ice into a younger, thinner version of its old self," explains NOAA.
A new study published this month found that the summer melting season has increased by about a month since 1979.
Additionally, the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice at its annual low-point in September has decreased by 40 percent since the 1970s, report researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Governing the oceans : the tragedy of the high seas

Looking at small scale and industrial fishing as well as fishing at sea, continental fishing and aquaculture, the video highlights FAO's Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries by exploring challenges facing the fishing sector and the sector's relevance for the world economy and people's diet.

From The Economist 

IN 1968 an American ecologist, Garrett Hardin, published an article entitled “The Tragedy of the Commons”.
He argued that when a resource is held jointly, it is in individuals’ self-interest to deplete it, so people will tend to undermine their collective long-term interest by over-exploiting rather than protecting that asset.
Such a tragedy is now unfolding, causing serious damage to a resource that covers almost half the surface of the Earth.

The high seas—the bit of the oceans that lies beyond coastal states’ 200-mile exclusive economic zones—are a commons.
Fishing there is open to all.
Countries have declared minerals on the seabed “the common heritage of mankind”.
The high seas are of great economic importance to everyone—fish is a more important source of protein than beef—and getting more so.
The number of patents using DNA from sea-creatures is rocketing, and one study suggests that marine life is a hundred times more likely to contain material useful for anti-cancer drugs than is terrestrial life.

Yet the state of the high seas is deteriorating (see article).
Arctic ice now melts away in summer.
Dead zones are spreading.
Two-thirds of the fish stocks in the high seas are over-exploited, even more than in the parts of the oceans under national control.
And strange things are happening at a microbiological level.
The oceans produce half the planet’s supply of oxygen, mostly thanks to chlorophyll in aquatic algae.
Concentrations of that chlorophyll are falling.
That does not mean life will suffocate.
But it could further damage the climate, since less oxygen means more carbon dioxide.

For tragedies of the commons to be averted, rules and institutions are needed to balance the short-term interests of individuals against the long-term interests of all users.
That is why the dysfunctional policies and institutions governing the high seas need radical reform.

 Size of the super-trawler Margiris

Net loss

The first target should be fishing subsidies.
Fishermen, who often occupy an important place in a country’s self-image, have succeeded in persuading governments to spend other people’s money subsidising an industry that loses billions and does huge environmental damage.
Rich nations hand the people who are depleting the high seas $35 billion a year in cheap fuel, insurance and so on.
The sum is over a third of the value of the catch.
That should stop.

Second, there should be a global register of fishing vessels.
These have long been exempt from an international scheme that requires passenger and cargo ships to carry a unique ID number.
Last December maritime nations lifted the exemption—a good first step.
But it is still up to individual countries to require fishing boats flying their flag to sign up to the ID scheme.
Governments should make it mandatory, creating a global record of vessels to help crack down on illegal high-seas fishing.
Somalis are not the only pirates out there.

Icelandic fishing in the north Atlantic.

Catching a big catch of fish,on a freezing trawler.

Documentary of fishing in the valuable water around Iceland.

Third, there should be more marine reserves.
An eighth of the Earth’s land mass enjoys a measure of legal protection (such as national-park status). Less than 1% of the high seas does.
Over the past few years countries have started to set up protected marine areas in their own economic zones.
Bodies that regulate fishing in the high seas should copy the idea, giving some space for fish stocks and the environment to recover.

But reforming specific policies will not be enough.
Countries also need to improve the system of governance.
There is a basic law of the sea signed by most nations (though not America, to its discredit).
But it contains no mechanisms to enforce its provisions.
Instead, dozens of bodies have sprung up to regulate particular activities, such as shipping, fishing and mining, or specific parts of the oceans.
The mandates overlap and conflict.
Non-members break the rules with impunity.
And no one looks after the oceans as a whole.

A World Oceans Organisation should be set up within the UN.
After all, if the UN cannot promote collective self-interest over the individual interests of its members, what is it good for?
Such an organisation would have the job of streamlining the impenetrable institutional tangle.
But it took 30 years to negotiate the law of the sea.
A global oceans body would probably take longer—and the oceans need help now.

An introduction to the International Law of the Sea course at UCL.

(Douglas Guilfoyle)

So in the meantime the law of the sea should be beefed up.
It is a fine achievement, without which the oceans would be in an even worse state.
But it was negotiated in the 1970s before the rise of environmental concerns, so contains little on biodiversity.
And the regional fishing bodies, currently dominated by fishing interests, should be opened up to scientists and charities.
As it is, the sharks are in charge of the fish farm.

This would not solve all the problems of the oceans.
Two of the biggest—acidification and pollution—emanate from the land.
Much of the damage is done within the 200-mile limit.
But institutional reform for the high seas could cut overfishing and, crucially, change attitudes.
The high seas are so vast and distant that people behave as though they cannot be protected or do not need protection.
Neither is true.
Humanity has harmed the high seas, but it can reverse that damage.
Unless it does so, there will be trouble brewing beneath the waves.

Links :

• BusinessGreen : EU warns economy is at risk from poorly oceans
• TriplePundit : Bloomberg’s ‘Vibrant Oceans’ Initiative Invests in the Future of Sustainable Fisheries 
• World Ocean Review 3