tuna

Imagine you were in a car that was rolling quickly towards the edge of a cliff. The sensible thing to do would be to slam on the brakes as much as possible, knowing that it will take some time to stop, even with your best efforts and your foot to the floor. Another option would be just to take your feet off the pedals and hope it slows down in time. If it was an EU fisheries regulator who found themselves at the wheel, though, chances are they'd consult widely to ensure that they had the best advice possible on how to get out of the situation, and then totally ignore it...

All the available data shows that many fisheries around the world are in serious decline. Some face complete collapse (hence the 'falling off a cliff' analogy) unless drastic action is taken to end over-fishing and give threatened stocks time to recover. This can only happen by setting aside large areas of ocean as marine reserves, off-limits to all forms of fishing. But sadly the fishing industry itself still seems incapable of taking any meaningful steps to address the problem.

OK so I'm a day or two off the pace with this story (courtesy of a long weekend - well even we need a day or two off once in a while), and didn't find out about Monday's tuna direct action in Paris until I showed up at the office again today. So what did I miss? Well, our French colleagues took the opportunity to protest against France's leading role in decimating Mediterranean bluefin tuna stocks by dumping five tonnes of tuna fish heads outside the door of the French Fisheries Ministry.

Timed to coincide with coincide with the opening of the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), in Marrakech, the action targetted France (as opposed to Italy or Spain, the two other worst offenders) in this instance because French Premier Nicholas Sarkozy currently holds the EU presidency. He has been using it to shape the EU position in favour of the short-term interests of his fishing industry above the need to save the Mediterranean bluefin tuna stock from collapse.

Purse seined tuna

Catch them while you can - endangered bluefin tuna © Greenpeace/Gavin Newman

When we said a few weeks ago that customers of the Nobu chain of high-class sushi restaurants wouldn't be aware that the bluefin tuna being served there was endangered, we never thought they would respond to our complaint in quite such a literal manner. But now diners can clearly see which dishes include tuna from endangered stocks because it's written on the menu. As reported in the Sunday Telegraph and as a result of Greenpeace's investigative work and subsequent discussions with Nobu, customers at the up-market eatery will now be able to clearly identify the endangered species on the menu.

The Sunday Telegraph reports this morning that, thanks to Greenpeace investigative work*, we now know that London’s Nobu restaurants, among the capital’s favourite celebrity hangouts, are serving up endangered bluefin tuna as sushi.

Update on tinned tuna, June 2009: how have the retailers have responded to our report?

We already know that John West's website contains plenty of corporate puffery. After all, this is the company that claims to "only purchase fish which is caught with no harm to the marine environment" but which came a dismal last in our sustainability league table of tinned tuna brands. Yes, John West truly is John Worst on tinned tuna.

Tinned tuna is big business - there's a can in almost everyone's cupboard. Here in the UK we can't get enough of it - we're the second biggest consumer in the world after the USA. Globally tuna exports are worth more than any other fish species, at around 2.7 billion dollars per year.

But there are big problems with the way tuna is caught. Our new briefing paper, Tinned Tuna's Hidden Catch, explains how large numbers of sea turtles, sharks and other fish are all being wiped out by the global tuna industry. And tuna is in trouble itself, with some species critically endangered by overfishing.