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Good news for tuna as they bounce back from the brink of extinction:
There’s good news for the tuna you’re used to seeing in supermarkets, like Atlantic and Southern bluefin. These and two other species are showing signs of recovery from overfishing.
They have been hunted by commercial fishing companies for decades but now it’s hoped they might not go extinct, as previously feared.
The news comes from International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which has just released an update to its Red List.
This list shows the extinction risk of thousands of species around the world. Unfortunately, more than 38,000 species are still facing the threat of extinction, but there were signs of recovery for some.
In 2011, most species of tuna were considered to be at serious risk of extinction. With 6 million tonnes[*] thought to have been caught in 2019, these are some of the most commercially valuable fish in the world.
In this update, the status of seven commonly fished tuna species was reassessed and there was good news for four of them.
The Atlantic bluefin tuna moved from Endangered to Least Concern and the Southern bluefin became Endangered rather than Critically Endangered. Both albacore and yellowfin tunas went from being Near Threatened to Least Concern.
“These Red List assessments are proof that sustainable fisheries approaches work, with enormous long-term benefits for livelihoods and biodiversity,” says Dr Bruce B Collette, chair of the IUCN SSC Tuna and Billfish Specialist Group.
“We need to continue enforcing sustainable fishing quotas and cracking down on illegal fishing.”
[*] That's 6 billion kilograms (~ 7.2 billion pounds). By comparison, there are approximately 7.8 billion people on earth, from infants to geriatrics. However you look at it, that's a lot of fish!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday September 12 2021, @12:06PM (6 children)
Picturing 7.8 billion humans weighing 0.923 lbs each really helps me appreciate how much 7.2 billion pounds represent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 12 2021, @02:08PM
Human biomass graph https://xkcd.com/1338/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday September 12 2021, @08:34PM (4 children)
If that's roughly a pound of tuna for every human on earth, I can see how people could eat more than that in a year, especially when you subtract the, er, "tare" from the actual "payload" that people eat. Oh and cats, don't forget the cats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 12 2021, @09:14PM (3 children)
Dunno, man, I never ate a cat.
Are they tasty?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Monday September 13 2021, @01:08AM (2 children)
The meat is a light red meat, closer to pork than beef. With light seasoning it was not unpalatable. For my very small sample set (n=1) it was quite tender but lacking fat.
(I'm not an asshole that kills pets for fun; This animal was feral, barely more than a kitten, and killed by a stray dog attack.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @01:46AM (1 child)
And how do you like your humans?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @02:16AM
everybody loves the tender ones.