Word: swordfishing
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Though far less profitable, shark meat has also enjoyed a sales boom since the early 1980s. Tuna and swordfish stocks began to dwindle at that time, and the U.S. government encouraged fishermen to pursue other targets. That may have been a big mistake. Traditional food fish, like cod and tuna, grow quickly and lay millions of eggs at a time. Sharks, by contrast, can take two decades to reach sexual maturity, have a long gestation period and bear only a few young at one time. Killing a relatively small number of females can dramatically limit the reproductive potential...
...Thick swordfish steaks. Orange roughy fillets. Great mounds of red-fleshed tuna. Judging from the seafood sections of local supermarkets, there would seem to be plenty of fish left in the oceans. But this appearance of abundance is an illusion, says Sylvia Earle, former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Already, Earle fears, an international armada of fishing vessels is on the verge of exhausting a storehouse of protein so vast that it once appeared to be infinite. "It's a horrible thing to contemplate," shudders Earle. "What makes it even worse is that we know better...
...most imminent peril are the giant predators of the oceans--sharks, of course, but also marlin, sailfish, swordfish and bluefin tuna, the magnificent swimming machines that have earned the nickname "Porsches of the sea." In the western Atlantic, the breeding population of northern bluefin, the largest tuna species, is thought to consist of perhaps 40,000 adults, down from some 250,000 two decades ago. Reason: the flourishing airfreight industry that allows fish brokers to deliver Atlantic Ocean bluefin overnight to Tokyo's sashimi market, where a single fish can fetch $80,000 or more at auction. "To a fisherman...
...with pollock and other groundfish, these nets indiscriminately draw in the creatures that swim or crawl alongside, including halibut, Pacific herring, Pacific salmon and king crab. In similar fashion, so-called longlines--which stretch for tens of miles and bristle with thousands of hooks--snag not just tuna and swordfish but also hapless sea turtles and albatrosses, marlin and sharks...
...frightening, is Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm (Norton; 227 pages; $23.95). The somewhat peculiar title refers to the disastrous confluence of a large hurricane and a muscular nor'easter in the fishing grounds off New England and Newfoundland in 1991. The Andrea Gail, a 72-ft. offshore commercial swordfish boat, sank with its crew of six men in the monstrous confusion of air and water that resulted. A small sailboat, the Satori, also sank, though its crew was saved, and so did a powerful rescue helicopter that ran out of fuel, ditched and lost one crewman...