Will the bluefin tuna, a top ocean predator, survive mankind’s blundering ways? Well, in this report concerning a single, fresh-caught tuna sold for $3.1 million …
Bluefin tuna is highly valued for its taste in sushi restaurants, but decades of overfishing have sent stocks plummeting. …
“The celebration surrounding the annual Pacific bluefin auction hides how deeply in trouble this species really is,” said Jamie Gibbon, associate manager of global tuna conservation at The Pew Charitable Trusts. “Its population has fallen to less than 3.5 percent of its historic size and overfishing still continues today.”
In response to the growing scarcity of the fish, Japan and other governments agreed in 2017 to strict quotas and restrictions on fishing, in an attempt to rebuild stocks from 20 percent of historic levels by 2034.
That has caused considerable unhappiness and some hardship in Oma. …
Hundreds of Japanese fishermen also protested against the new quotas outside the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in June, while Oma also canceled its annual tuna festival in October in protest.
But Gibbon lamented that Japan and other countries were already lobbying for higher catch quotas for 2019, just one year into the 16-year recovery plan, while also noting reports of Japanese fishermen discarding and not reporting dead bluefin to avoid exceeding their quotas. [WaPo]
The immediate question is what will the Japanese do when the tuna are gone? Will they abjectly take responsibility, as it won’t matter? Or will they disavow it?
Image source: Tillamook County Pioneer
Or will the Japanese decline in population[1] be rapid enough to save the bluefin tuna from oblivion? Probably not, as I doubt the decline is rapid enough, but it’s worth considering the fact that human overpopulation is the single largest factor in the decline and extinction of many species world-wide – regardless of them being land- or sea-based. If tuna have sentience, I doubt they’re laughing that at least they get to poison those who prey on them with mercury. (I have a friend who, until recently, had dangerous levels of mercury in his body, attributable to his tuna addiction.)
But over-population is not the entire problem. Fragmentary information is also a problem, as if we had perfect information, then we’d realize that this problem is of our own causing, and the fishermen would be collaborating on how to rebuild that population – and not be clamoring to commit industry suicide. That is the most macabrely funny part of this little story of mankind vs the fishes, that the future is not as important as is tomorrow.
And how we’re going to get past that wall in our path is a supremely important question.
1 Another WaPo article which, ironically, explores the damage the Japanese demographic decline is doing to Japan’s economy, if in fact it’s really damage at all:
According to a new report from the Japanese government, Japanese women had 921,000 babies in 2018. That’s the fewest births since comparable records began in 1899 — when the country’s population was a third its current size.
Meanwhile, deaths in Japan hit their highest level in nearly a century. Put together, that means the country’s population is shrinking rapidly, experiencing its largest natural decline on record.
Why does this matter? Well, it’s hard for an economy to grow with fewer workers. And as more people age out of the workforce, a swelling number of retirees must depend on a shrinking number of working people to power the economy. The tax base required to fund public services for those retirees — including health care and elder care — also shrinks.
Perhaps this is the idolatry of the perpetually growing economy. In the more extreme wings of the left side of the political spectrum, this idolatry has been called in question. I would do so simply because it’s so abjectly accepted by the author of this article, who goes on to suggest that if the United States wants to avoid the Japanese problems, then it should begin adopting policies much like those under exploration in Japan. The article seems to completely ignore the problems population growth will bring on, fixating only on the well-known problems of a growing retiree demographic in combination with a static or shrinking worker base.
This is one of the great conundrums of the age, and may not end well at all. I keep hoping for some unexpected solution, though, such as a great leap forward in medicine such that the elderly experience ill health for only a month, and are otherwise healthy and able to work. The other options are far less appetizing; macabre, even.
