Given all the press recently about the serious decline of blue fin tuna worldwide, should we be eating tuna? Well, it seems to depend on what type of tuna it is and which tuna “stock” it comes from. There are seven species which are divided into 23 stocks. Research shows that six of these stocks are overfished, six are fully utilised, two have not been assessed and nine are not yet fully utilised. So leaving aside blue fin tuna, the largest and most highly prized species, it sounds as though things could be a lot worse. However there is an over-capacity of tuna fishing boats, and there are no controls to prevent new boats from entering fisheries.
Tuna migrate long distances and may well pass through fishing zones of several countries as well as international waters. This makes their conservation that bit more problematic, as they suffer from the tragedy of the commons, meaning everyone has an incentive to take as much as possible of a resource because if they don’t then other people will. Now would seem to be a good time for countries to look at working together to try and preserve tuna while their numbers are in relatively good shape.
There is a good article on this on the New Scientist’s website.
