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EXCLUSIVE ONLINE REPORT Rock the Boat for Sustainable Fisheries Gen Del Raye It takes wisdom to catch a fish, just as it takes wisdom to protect one. Yet while numerous advances in our understanding of fish populations over the years have made humans extremely successful fishermen, we remain ineffective conservationists. More than a third of the world’s fisheries have commercially collapsed within the last century, while only a handful have subsequently been restored. Take the world’s most valuable commercial fish, the bluefin tuna. The tuna business these days is the epitome of high-tech fishing — a typical catch might involve two airplanes, two speedboats, a sonar dome the size of a suburban bedroom, and a mile or so of netting. At the same time, however, the management situation of this fish is in woeful disarray. The number of bluefin remaining in the oceans, the number of distinct fishing stocks and the age to maturity are all matters of serious disagreement. These disparities partly explain, for example, the heated exchange that occurred this year when bluefin were unsuccessfully proposed as additions to the endangered species list. Meanwhile, long-term fishing data shows that tuna populations have declined by over 90 percent in the past fifty years.
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