Failing the Fantastic..again.
Once some years ago, I was lucky enough to see some Atlantic Bluefin tuna up close in the water. They had shared the unhappy fate of following their food into a Weir. As the fisherman who owned the weir had no license for Tuna an attempt was made to heard them out, but alas to no avail and eventually the 20 or so 500lb plus fish were killed and sold. I thought it a very sad day although as someone who loves sushi, it would be a bit hypocritical to be overly strident in my protest. That was over 20 years ago, and now few in places no, Tuna are seen in Eastern Canada. We have largely fished them out. These magnificent fish, that swim so fast and so far that tagged specimens have being known to regularly cross the Atlantic Ocean, are rapidly getting fished out! The International Commission for Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) estimates we are killing them three times faster than they can replace themselves and are in danger of wiping out the breeding population.
If you have young children they will likely never see a wild Blue Fin! Unless we do the sensible thing and stop fishing them to extinction. It was for this reason that I was very disappointed to read today that Europe has once again failed to list Blue Fin Tuna as endangered and placing a ban on fishing them. To be more precise Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Malta and Cyprus voted against the proposal. Other European countries including Portugal did vote for the ban. The stupidity here is that these countries are all saying no because they want to make money off over fishing and have all decided to race for the "failure" line. This amounts to countries making decisions in a manner that we are all scolded for in kindergarden..."but Billy got more..that's not fair..." I mean come on...it's not saving a planet, changing an economy, or even stopping a war. It is simply all agreeing you can not keep killing a valuable species at three times the rate it can reproduce and expect it to last. Canadians have way to many example of our own. Think Cod or Salmon for recent references in how not to do it in our own back yard!
We talk about how serious climate change is; we debate how many trillions of dollars it will cost; maybe we need to ask, what is it we want to have a climate for? Climate is just part of an overall environment. The exosystem or space in which we and all other life on earth share and live in is more than just CO2 levels. We need to look at the bigger environmental picture and start saving the ecosystem. Climate is an important aspect of that, and we may or may not be able to impact and adjust climate, but we can certainly stop making decisions based on short sited greed when we know with certainty exactly what we are doing, could easily stop it, and are certain of what will happen if we don’t. If we can not even save one species of fish how can we save a climate, a biosphere, ourselves? Hum, maybe Tuna will do better if we don’t!