At the top of the Atlantic Ocean food chain is the bluefin tuna, a half-ton hunting machine that can accelerate faster than a Porsche. Yet it is powerless against the appetites for wealthy Japanese diners: Industrial fishing has reduced bluefin numbers by two-thirds in the Mediterranean and 80 percent in the Atlantic. A fishing ban could restore healthy numbers within a decade, but at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species this March in Qatar, Japan marshaled 68 nations to vote against a ban on international trade in the vanishing fish - after treating them to a bluefin sushi buffet.
What's motivating Japan and the other tuna-fishing nations is more than a taste for raw fish. Prized bluefin sell at auction in Tokyo for as much as $175,000 apiece. Presumable the very last bluefin will fetch an even higher price.
Source: Sierra Club magazine, July/August 2010
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