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The Pacific Bluefin Tuna: A Conservation Success Story · How To Protect The Ocean

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  I am so happy that you tuned into this episode because it's not
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  every day that I get to talk about a
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  conservation success story. There have been many conservation success
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  stories over the period of marine conservation. However,
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  it's not often that we get these wins and today we're going to be talking about
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  the pacific bluefin tuna because there's been a
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  huge international coordinated effort to bring the species
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  back from the brink of extinction to something that
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  could actually be seen as a population that is growing and we've actually
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  hit that day there's been a recent stock assessment that shows that
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  there's been a huge increase in the number of female Pacific
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  bluefin tuna that can have reproductive success, and
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  it shows that we can actually turn a lot of
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  tuna species around from bad management in
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  the past very quickly. In fact, 10 years earlier than
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  we expected for this Pacific bluefin tuna. talk about this
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  conservation success story, what happened, why it became such
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  a story, and what happened really to understand that, hey,
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  this species was in trouble. We're gonna talk about that on
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  today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the
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  show. Hey
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  everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
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  your host Andrew Lewin and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean,
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  how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean
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  by taking action. And today we're going to be talking about that action taking
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  by government and by a number of governments, international governments.
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  Now, when we talk about the Pacific tuna, the bluefin tuna,
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  we talk about a species that goes across borders. This
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  is not a species that just understands that there are
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  U.S., Canadian, and international borders. They stay within those national
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  boundaries so that they can get better protected. No, no, no, no. This is
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  a species that goes, it starts off in the Sea of Japan. all
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  the way in between japan and the philippines where they're where they're bred and they're
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  born and then they come over to like the baja
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  california mexico area and then they go back after
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  a year and where they feed and stuff and go back for six
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  six thousand mile trek across the pacific and
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  they do it in like 55 days because they're incredible swimmers And
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  it's great to see a species like this that
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  is highly sought after for food rebound the
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  way it has. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. It's going to be the focus. Because
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  I came across this article on LinkedIn. I'm very active on
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  LinkedIn. So if you ever want to hit me up on LinkedIn, please do so. I
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  came across this article. It's a LinkedIn article by
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  Jamie Gibbon, who is a manager of international fisheries
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  at the Pew Charitable Trust. And it caught my eye because
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  he talks about the Pacific bluefin tuna, a decade-long conservation
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  success. And he links to another NOAA article that
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  talks about how it went from overfish to a sustainable success
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  story. But Jamie's talk he starts off his article really
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  in an interesting way he talks about like how working in conservation can
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  sometimes feel like an endless slog filled with both
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  victories and frustrating setbacks and focusing on international fisheries
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  which have been doing for over which he's been doing for over a decade can
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  make everything feel like it's more drawn out. High seas
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  fisheries are very valuable, worth tens of billions of dollars a
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  year, and so there's a constant pressure to increase the amount
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  of fish that can be caught, but management decisions are usually
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  only made once a year. So if the progress isn't met
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  after that one year, you have to wait an entire 12-month cycle
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  to get your management priorities in place for the next
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  year, and if it's not in there, It's not great. So that can help
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  build overfish stocks. Tuna and sharks grow relatively slowly
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  and live a relatively long time. So recovery can feel like it takes
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  forever. But that's why this is interesting, because back
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  in 2012, as Jamie reports, a
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  scientific report showed that the population of Pacific bluefin tuna had
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  been decimated by overfishing, which the
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  stock dropped over 96% from its historic high. But
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  that didn't stop a Japanese sushi chain from buying
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  the bluefin tuna caught the next year for $1.7 million
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  in a celebratory auction. You gotta
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  remember that this species is large. When
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  you get one particular species, they could weigh
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  up to 1,000 pounds. And they're huge,
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  they're like 10 feet in length. So they are big species, they
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  are big fish. So buying something for $1.7 million
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  is a huge, huge win. So with that decision,
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  though, everything was going wrong for the species, showing that the
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  money was outweighing the need for conservation. And
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  in fact, with a lot of tuna species, the imminent
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  decision or the imminent likelihood of you
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  know, these species going extinct, that could go extinct, kind
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  of increase their value of each individual species that's caught, or each
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  individual of that species that's caught. You know, so
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  a lot of places, a lot of corporations would catch these tuna,
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  freeze them for a long time, for like 20 years or so, and sell them down
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  the line when they know that they're gonna be extinct for more money. It's just
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  an investment for a lot of these corporations. If you don't know what
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  I'm talking about, watch End of the Line, It is an
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  impeccable documentary that is narrated by
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  Ted Danson, who's involved with Oceana, and they talk about
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  the tuna industry in general, and you get a feel for what the tuna
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  industry goes through in Europe, in the Mediterranean, in