There Go The Pacific Bluefins

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop
   — Herb Stein

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Kiyomura Company's President Kimura, who runs a chain of sushi restaurants, wields his cutting sword as he shows off the big Pacific Bluefin Tuna he is about to dismember. This 489 pound fish fetched a record price of 1.78 million dollars. Image source.

The bluefin tuna is considered one of the more valuable fish in the world, said the report from PRI's The World.

Gee whiz! — I wonder why?

To answer that question, we can consult Bloomberg's Tuna Sold at Record Price Is Overfished, Study Says, and the study it cites (pdf). This story contains a priceless quote.

The number of Pacific bluefin tuna, a fish that fetched a record 155.4 million yen ($1.78 million) in a Tokyo auction last week, dropped 96.4 percent due to decades of overfishing, the Pew Environment Group said.

The bluefin’s numbers have plummeted because of inadequate fishing regulations in the species’ western Pacific spawning area, Amanda Nickson, Pew’s director for global tuna conservation, said today in a phone interview. The stock assessment by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-Like Species in the North Pacific Ocean, a joint U.S.- Japan research group, is “shocking,” said Nickson...

“You have this incredibly valuable, sought-after fish where the first one of the year can be sold for over $1.7 million, yet it’s been allowed to become depleted to this truly frightening point,” Nickson said. “That is just not a situation that can continue.”

You're right about that, Amanda! — in every sense, this is just not a situation that can continue.

I couldn't find that 96.4% number the Pew report on the Japanese study came up with, but let's look at the spawining stock biomass (SSB) for Pacific Bluefins, and 4 model projections of future biomass and future total catch.

Historic SSB on the left, 4 model-run projections on the right. The only real mystery is why stocks recovered in the early-mid 1990s. Remember, these SSB numbers reflect the biomass of a fish species that was already depleted long before 1960. That's the shifting baseline I've talked about.

Needless to say, that big Pacific Bluefin fetched $1.78 million because tuna of this age and size are now extremely rare in the northern Pacific. (A long time ago, such fish were common.) Yet the optimistic projections given in the study (right panel above) show none of the fluctuations or the downward trajectory in bluefin SSB since the late-1990s, trends which are obvious in the historical data (left panel above).

Well, let's see ... the organization who did the study is a Japanese group, and Japan is the largest consumer of sushi made from bluefins.

Do we have a name for this kind of blindness? We sure do! What do we call it?

Denial

More priceless quotes from Bloomberg—

Japanese officials have reviewed the International Scientific Committee’s report and plan to discuss regulations or other measures to be implemented in response, Shuya Nakatsuka, deputy manager of the Japan Fisheries Agency’s international unit, said by phone today. The population decline would be discussed when the WCPFC meets in September, he said.

‘Very Low’

“There have been cases in the past where the population of bluefin tuna has been low, but have recovered,” Nakatsuka said. “Still, the results show that the population is very low this time.”

Stocks declined 83 percent to about 22,600 metric tons in 2010 from about 132,000 in 1960, when they had already begun to be depleted, said [Amanda] Nickson, citing the report by the committee. More than 90 percent of bluefin that are caught are juveniles that have not yet reproduced, she said.

And, Oh, did I neglect to mention that the study said that related species like Bonita and Mackeral are also severely overfished?

I want you to take another look at the big smile on Kiyomura president Kimura's face as he prepares to slice into that giant bluefin laying on the table before him. Take a good, hard look at it now, because sometime in the not-so-far-flung future, Kimura won't be smiling like that ever again.

Comments

[Bill McDonald]

At that point, perhaps he will do the honorable thing with that sword.

[J. Drew]

This isn't the only kind of record being set by fish in Japan right now.

http://peakoil.com/enviroment/meet-mike-the-most-radioactive-fish-ever-from-fukushima/

MMMM sushi!

[Chris]

'Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons. Trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a decade hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.' -- Aldo Leopold, speaking of the passenger pigeon, 1947

[Dave Cohen]

@J. Drew

And you are reading peakoil.com because --

1) the people are so nice there, even though these hydrocarbon Doomers are uninformed, biased morons

2) you don't know any better

3) it beats doing real work

Apparently my last comment/e-mail message didn't work, so I thought I would try again.

-- Dave

[J.Drew]

Hey, at least I'm not reading Zerohedge....

(the root source for that particular article, and not a site I am prone to visiting.)

[J. Drew]

Also, assuming you italisized nice as a reference to my comment a couple sundays about nice people, the gibbering partisan goons that populate the online forums at PO.com are not the "nice people" I was talking about.

[Jim]

Susi Sushi Call Me Maybe Animated Cartoon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEZ6cSwJHUw

Om nom nom nom nom. The tasty bluefin is but one species to be 'consumed'.

[Oliver]

Hearty applause for Bill McD - yours is a perfect solution in 13 words.

[Buffaloian]

Pictures like that make me want to fly over to Japland and slice that fucker open myself (I am referring to Kimura).

Dave, I think part of your reduced traffic to this site is because people that REALLY get it are getting to the point where we can't read shit like this without wanting to actually kill the fuckers involved, and I've never even been in a physical fight with another person. It's just too damn hopeless these days.

[Wheelerlucas]

I think Buffaloian got a point. But, then I am person who can't say that I have never gotten in a physical fight with another person.

I say it again, DAVE IS A PROPHET, and simply will not be regarded or respected. His level of understanding and compassion are simply too rare ... oh hell lets do the full quote:

-- "Too Weird to live, too rare to die" --

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas -- Hunter S. Thompson.

I wonder how much that goes for by the pound? Good thing most people are swine -- not to suggest they won't try to put a price on everything, it really is a question of knowing the value of anything.

President Kimura is for the present simply living his culture, which does, as pointed out above, provide him with an honorable alternative when that is not longer viable.

Now if we were as a species honorable, we would have quite some time ago, embraced the goals of the Human Voluntary Extinction Movement {see. www.vhemt.org}

[online forex]

Greetings to www.forex.cd - Your very own premium quality guide of online forex information and reviews.
online forex http://www.forex.cd/