I'd been wondering idly the other day what a "bluefin" tuna looked like and how it was different from a regular tuna, and now Kay Steiger gives me my answer. Of course, I'd only ever heard of bluefin tuna because thanks to overfishing and so forth you now can hardly find any.
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Bluefin Tuna
30 Nov 2007 10:47 am
Comments (10)
The BBC produced a wonderful documentary on the oceans called Blue Planet that mentioned the dwindling bluefin tuna population. Your picture link is broken, btw. Pretty simple though, bluefins have blue fins, whereas the yellowfin tuna has yellow fins.
I hate it how so often, the first time I ever hear about some animal is when it's about to go extinct or just went extinct as far as anybody knows.
You can hardly find any bluefin? I found some on my plate at the sushi place I went to last week. It was only a little more expensive than the other tuna.
an individual fish can get up to $100,000 on the market
Except that it is only the rare, monster sized tuna that would fetch such a price. And, ironically, since they are being fished to extinction, you can't (or can only very rarely) ever find a fish of the size that can bring in this price.
Clearly we have to start breeding bluefin tuna or they will go extinct for good. It is the same as with cattle. Clearly we have evolved over millions of years to hunt big sea fish and the ecosystem needs us to keep them alive. We are not the problem - we are the solution. Order bluefin tuna today at your sushi house or some poor fisherman starves... Bear in mind that fisherman like rangers and meat consumers are protecting the environment (no vegetables could grow on the sea and the land could not be used for agriculture anyway). In fact we need more such humans on earth to protect the environment even more. Maybe we should breed more humans or they too will go extinct one day? I don't know how but clearly technology is also part of the solution and not the problem - as it has been in the past. We just need better policies and all will be good. We would be sad to lose the cuddly bluefin.. they are oh so sweet and adorable. Who has a lovely blue fin.. who..?
Between cheap jet fuel and plentiful fish, we have been living in a brief golden age of global sushi.
Once it comes to an end, I figure you'll be able to date it from about 1975 to 2015 or so.
The times actually ran an article on bluefin farmin last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/world/asia/26tuna.html
I dont know how feasible it is. But that's one tasty Scombridae.
"You can hardly find any bluefin? I found some on my plate at the sushi place I went to last week. It was only a little more expensive than the other tuna."
Was it listed as 'bluefin tuna,' or just 'tuna?' It might turn into the whole 'fish&chips' thing, where they don't use cod, but the name stays. You can still find it, but that doesn't mean the stocks aren't going downhill very fast.
bluefin are remarkable fish.
They are acutally warm blooded. the have relatively small muscle cells with lots of pigment (red sashimi) that can exchange oxygen faster than other fish and a special circulatory system to take heat from their muscles. Their normal body temperature is 30-32C, warmer that all seawater in the open ocean. They can maintain this temperature in waters as cold as 7C, which allows them to hunt in cold waters that other large predators are not efficient in. They are a mean hunting machine
In the mid 20th century, Atlantic fishermen caught 1-ton bluefin and sold them for catfood at 5 cents/pound until the found the japanese would give them 10 cents. there are no more 1-ton bluefin left.
Comments closed December 14, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Ms. Steiger decries the overfishing that has led to the potential disappearance of the bluefin. However, according to the Wikipedia section on bluefin tuna, an individual fish can get up to $100,000 on the market. It seems highly unlikely that anything but a very strict, strongly enforced law could even begin to slow the fishing of bluefin.
Posted by Jim G | November 30, 2007 11:26 AM