Greenpeace Japan has just recently released its “red list” this past 21st of July. This comprehensive little guide outlines the different endangered species which are currently being sold in supermarkets or served up in restaurants.

Greenpeace Japan has launched this “red list”, which is a ranking guide for seafood, in the hopes that it will force supermarkets in Japan to remove the endangered fish from their shelves, and stop selling them.

The Japanese version of this list contains around 15 different kinds of fish, including 5 different kinds of tuna which are very popular locally, which Greenpeace thinks shouldn’t be put on the shelves or in anyone’s frying pan. Research has shown that roughly 25 percent of the world’s tuna and 45 percent of the soon to be extinct Blue Fin Tuna is eaten by the Japanese. Greenpeace is hoping that by releasing this list will help to discourage consumers and retailers from eating the fish.

It should be noted that the fish on this list are those that Greenpeace thinks are susceptible to overfishing, are fished from rapidly depleting stocks, or are reeled in by using methods deemed to be damaging to ambient environments in the ocean and other fish species. The list for Japan includes Atlantic salmon, Bluefin Tuna, Greenland halibut, monkfish, red snapper and sharks. Greenpeace also has country specific lists and can be found on the corresponding Greenpeace website.

One has to ask… If it’s not OK for the Japanese to fish these “endangered fish” why is that same fish not on all the lists for the rest of the world???

bluefin tuna

A whale of a tuna was reeled in off Japan, and turned quite a few heads at a fish market in Tokyo on Friday. This was the largest recorded tuna reeled in since 1986, weighing in at 445 kilograms (981 pounds), and sold for 3.2 million yen ($36,700).

“Many of the people who work at the market have never seen a tuna that big,” said a government official from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, who regulate the Tsukiji fish market. It is interesting to note that the Tsukiji fish market is one of the largest fish markets in the world.

The monstrous tuna, which was auctioned off at 7,200 yen per kilogram, had already had its guts removed and gills cleaned off, which means this whopper of a fish must have weighed more when it was first reeled in off Nagasaki prefecture this week, the official continued.

“It is extremely rare to see a tuna heavier than 400 kilograms,” he said. Yes it is very rare indeed. Tuna generally only reach the 200 kilogram mark, and it is rare to find one of this size.

The largest Japanese caught tuna ever sold at the Tsukiji fish market was a 496 kilogram specimen reeled in in the spring of 1986. However, the largest tuna recorded in the world came from Canada, caught in 1995 weighing in at an astounding 497 kilograms.

There has been a steep decline in global tuna stocks due to overfishing over the past decades. This has caused Western nations to put in a motion for a trade ban on the endangered Atlantic bluefin Tuna.

A new method for distinguishing between tuna species has been presented in a paper co-authored by Dr Jordi Viñas, a fish genetics specialist at Girona University in Spain and Dr Sergi Tudela, Head of Fisheries of WWF Mediterranean.

The new method is based on gene sequencing and the researchers hope that it will support fisheries management and make trade restrictions possible for endangered species of tuna, since it can be used to accurately identify the species from any kind of processed tuna issue. It works for all eight recognized species of tuna, including highly endangered species like the Southern and Pacific bluefin tuna.

The true tunas belong to the genus Thunnus and are among the most endangered of all commercially exploited fish. They are also high priced, so when you pick up some cheap tinned fish in the supermarket the box will rarely contain Thunnus; the content will in most cases have been made from fish belonging to related families such as mackerels.

The Principality of Monaco has already lodged an application before the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) for a trade ban on the endangered Atlantic (Northern) bluefin tuna.

The paper – “A Validated Methodology for Genetic Identification of Tuna

Species (Genus Thunnus)” – was published on October 27 in the journal PLoS ONE.

http://www.plosone.org/

This year, fishermen in the southern ocean of Australia report seeing more tuna than in 20 years. They report not only bigger catches, but also that the average tuna is about 20% lager than previous years.

Australian Tuna Association chief executive Brian Jeffries says: “There’s a lot more fish out there than there has been in the past 10 years and the fish are bigger in that period.”

This leads some to believe that the tuna population is recovering and that it has been doing so since 2006 when it was discovered that Japanese boats were catching 40,000 tonnes of southern blue fin tuna illegally each year and had been doing so for at least 20 years. The discovery lead to a crack down on Japanese illegal fishing and the illegal fishing in the region has, although still preset, dramatically dropped since 2006.

Is the tuna population in the Southern Ocean starting to recover, or is this just a sign of an imminent collapse – similar to the good years that preceded the cod collapse in the Atlantic? Only the future can tell.

Sorry for the silence over Halloween. Posting will now hopefully return to normal with at least one post every or every other day. This first post will be somewhat of a link post catching up on some of the fishy news that happened last week.

First of is an update on the Atlantic Blue fin Tuna. Despite good signs going into the Marrakesh tuna conference the outcome was very bad with the quote for eastern blue fin tuna being set to 22,000 tons, 50 per cent higher than scientific advice. Last years quota was 29,000 tons but it is believed that a total of 61,000 tons were brought ashore when counting illegal catches. These levels are unsustainable and the blue fin tuna populations are near a collapse. You can read more about this here

Another Tuna news. A fisherman out of San Diego is believed to have caught the largest yellow fin tuna ever caught. The tuna weighed in at 381.1-pound. View a video here.

Time to stop talking about tunas and start talking about something completely different, snakeheads. A new study has shown that snakeheads are proving much less damaging to the native fauna than expected. They do not seem to be destroying populations of native fish such as largemouth and peacock bass. The scientist examined the stomach content of 127 snakeheads and found one of the most common pray to be other snakeheads. They found 13 snakeheads, one bluegill, 11 mosquitofish, seven warmouth, two peacock bass, several lizards, bufo toads, small turtles, a rat and a snake. No remains of largemouth bass were found.

Another interesting article posted this last week is this one that tells the story of the mass gharial die of that happened last winter when half the worlds population of this once common animal. Scientist finally thinks they know why this happened. Something that might help save the worlds last 100 specimens.

That is it for this time but I might post more post like this during the week if I decide that there are more news that are to important to miss.

I thought I would report on a few good news in the world of marine conservation. First of we are going to look at tuna fishing and the endangered Mediterranean Blue fin Tuna. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) an organization consisting of NGOs and governments surprisingly voted to cut tuna quotas in half (almost) in the Mediterranean as well as instituting a complete fishing ban during the spawning season in May and June when they meet at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona. The surprising result came after Spain (an important fishing nation) and Japan (the key blue fin market) supported the restricted fishing to prevent the tuna population from collapsing. The IUCN Decision is not legally binding but puts a considerable amount of pressure on the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) which will decide the future of tuna fishing for the coming years at a meeting in December. The effects of diminished quotas remain to be seen as a rapport from the WWF earlier this month showed that half all tuna caught in Italy was caught illegally and that illegal fishing was rampant in Italy.

I am going to leave tuna and talk about something completely different, Beluga whales. The US government this week listed the Beluga whales of Alaska’s Cook Inlet as an endangered species / population. The decision means much stricter rules about what can and can’t be done in the area and local authorities need to get the permission of the National Marine Fisheries Service before they can approve a number of activities in the area. Governor and GOP vice president candidate Sara Palin is worried that the decision will prevent economic growth in the area. She fears that the decision among other things will prevent the expansion of the harbor. The population declined nearly 50 percent between 1994 and 1998 and has not yet recovered. This is believed to be due to developments in the area, predation from killer whales and frequent whale strandings. Environmentalists hope that the new found protection will help increase the population again.

Beluga whale

Working together WWF and Greenpeace have obtained evidence that the tune fleet working in the central Mediterranean is using airplanes to find tune. This practice is internationally banned in the Mediterranean as it allows the oversized fishing fleet to catch to much tuna and make to big damage to the tuna population. Read more about this here

Blue fin tuna fetches a very high price on the international market and the species is becoming increasingly threatened by over fishing. Illegal fishing operations are common. Although attempts are being made to internationally limit the fishing and restrict the fishing quotas (or even ban fishing for a few years) little progress is made due to the economic value of this fish. Recently however a number of encouraging actions have been taken by individual nations and private interests. One such action is that one of the biggest sea food whole sellers in the UK that sell to a lot of top restaurants etc have stopped selling blue fin tune due to the unsustainable fishing for this species.