Word: bluefins
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...material is mostly skipjack, a small, unglamorous tuna that makes up about 60% of the world's tuna catch. Of the main commercial species, bluefin, yellowfin and bigeye tuna are primarily sold to the sashimi market; skipjack and albacore land in cans. Over half the skipjack caught each year come from the waters in the western and central Pacific, and while skipjack in the region are officially plentiful, according to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) that keeps track of them, talk to anyone in General Santos and you'll hear otherwise. Supplies of fresh, local skipjack dropped...
...Endangered Species? In October, Monaco formally proposed to register Atlantic bluefin on Appendix 1 of the U.N.'s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a move that would temporarily ban its trade and transfer enforcement from ICCAT to governments. If trade is shut down, so would be fishing, and the Atlantic bluefin would have some time to recover, much as the humpback whale rebounded after being listed in 1975. Monaco's proposal, which all but six E.U. states voted to co-sponsor and which has U.S. support, will go before CITES for approval in March...
...Even so, the fishing companies know better than anyone that the only way to save the business is to save the species. The Spanish company has invested in the global quest to get bluefin to reproduce and grow in captivity - a task that has eluded all but a few scientists. In a trial run by the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, scientists funded by Ricardo Fuentes have injected Atlantic bluefin females with synthetic hormones to trigger the fish's egg-laying response. This year, the team helped create some 150 million bluefin eggs, of which they took about 3 million...
...Some are further along. In 2002, Japan's Kinki University successfully bred and raised bluefin in pens and is now selling small amounts of the farmed fish. This year, Clean Seas, an Australian fishing company, got its southern bluefin living in a land-based tank to spawn eggs that were raised to be fingerlings - a breakthrough in the growth cycle. The success was so unexpected that Clean Seas had to leave all but a few of the young fish to die; there wasn't enough room to let them grow...
...Read "The Sushi Wars: Can the Bluefin Tuna Be Saved...