Lucrative Bluefin Tuna Farming Vaccuums Surrounding Seas - Independent

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"The bluefin - one of seven tuna species fished commercially - can reach weights of more than 1,000lb, but that does not stop the sleek beast accelerating faster than a Porsche 911. It is found in waters from the southern Indian Ocean to the North Atlantic. But the Japanese love bluefin so much that they have almost eaten it off the face of the Earth. By the late 1990s, stocks were down to an all time low - less than nine per cent of what they were in 1960.

Yet it appeared salvation was at hand. Like salmon and trout before it, tuna was supposed to be saved by the fish farmers. Not only would raising the fish in captivity allow wild stocks to recover, but it would ensure that a steady supply continued to flow into Japanese markets.

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Mr Staniford, author of Cancer of the Coast: the environmental and public health disaster of sea-cage fish farming, has spent years highlighting the many problems associated with salmon, trout and cod farming. He is deeply concerned about the future of the bluefin. "The idea that raising tuna in captivity could help wild stocks recover is frankly ludicrous," said Mr Staniford. He explained that the animals face all the problems experienced by salmon and cod, but the pressure on wild numbers was all the greater because the penned fish were actually plucked from the oceans.

Furthermore, with the tuna being a carnivorous fish, its voracious appetite meant that other fish stocks had to be heavily fished to feed it. While it takes three tons of wild fish to produce one ton of salmon and five tons of wild fish to produce one ton of cod, it takes a massive 20 tons of wild fish to fatten up just one ton of tuna for market. The effects on wild fisheries are devastating, he warned. Yet the European Union continues to fund the expansion of tuna farms in the Mediterranean. Such subsidies could lead to commercial extinction of the endangered bluefin tuna within just a few years, the WWF warned this week. The conservation group said tuna farming jumped by 50 per cent last year in the Mediterranean to reach 21,000 tons. A catch at this level "is not compatible with the conservation of a healthy bluefin tuna population," it warned.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=529554