bluefin

*Bluefin sushi will only be available for a limited period because bluefin will soon be extinct. © Ultimate Holding Company / Greenpeace

Bluefin tuna is an endangered species, and it's the oceanic equivalent of a tiger, rhino, or panda - yet it is still being served up as expensive sushi in restaurants. In London alone, there are dozens of venues serving up bluefin, although the celebrity hang-out Nobu is probably the most high-profile culprit.

Our politicians have failed on bluefin tuna, they ignore the scientific warnings, and continue to set quotas that are then ignored by the fishermen.

If we want to stop bluefin from becoming extinct in just a few years then we need to take action now.

John Hocevar, aboard the Rainbow Warrior in Malta, describes how sailors from one of the Mediterranean's largest tuna fishing companies violently attacked a female crew member trying to inspect and document their trawler's cargo. Watch the video evidence for yourself.

It's all gone a bit tuna crazy in the media over the last couple of days. What with the launch of The End of the Line, the Nobu protests and the Pret a Manger announcement, coverage of the plight of bluefin tuna has accelerated faster than one of the mighty fish themselves (which as we all know by now, is quicker off the mark than a Porsche 911).

Update, December 2009: John West introduces new sustainability policy »

Last year we published our tinned tuna league table, ranking the main retailers and brands on the overall sustainability of their canned tuna. Tinned tuna, which is normally skipjack (the most common variety), is a food cupboard staple in the UK, and we are the second biggest consumers in the world, so we can have a massive impact on improving the sustainability of the fishing that fills the tins.

As well as assessing the information given on the tins (some didn’t even tell you what species was inside!) we also evaluated the impact of how the fish were being caught, and the company's overall sourcing policies.

Sugababes star Amelle Berrabah helps to promote our 'Endangered Sushi' message outside Nobu London © Dennis Gill

The End Of The Line has certainly been getting the rich and famous agitated on the often-overlooked issue of fish. The film's narrator Ted Danson has been a long time campaigner on oceans issues but in the past couple of weeks many more famous faces have been getting interested in fishy things.

Young diners at Nobu get the bluefin message

The newspapers and blog sites have been full of Nobu's bluefin shame over the past week or so. And quite right too. The spotlight of the imminent release of The End Of The Line which features the plight of endangered bluefin, is putting the celebrity-favourite restaurant under increasing pressure.

On Friday Greenpeace ran a full page advert in the London Evening Standard, and the story of celebrities' bluefin backlash has been reported from Hello! to the New York Post. So today seemed an ideal time to pay Nobu's London restaurants a visit too. And that's just what we did.

A detail from today's Evening Standard advert

Update: we visited Nobu London last night to ask why bluefin is still on their menu

The advert above appeared in today’s London Evening Standard, and does so amidst increasing pressure on the swanky Nobu sushi restaurant chain. The issue of course is that Nobu continue to serve bluefin tuna, which is officially listed as an endangered species by the IUCN. That makes it equivalent to serving up gorilla, tiger or rhino on a plate.

Bluefin tuna are as endangered as rhinos and tigers

The celeb-favourite sushi restaurant Nobu is back in the media spotlight this week, but with column inches devoted to bluefin tuna rather than A-list diners.

Lords of the sea no longer... bluefin tuna carcasses await auction at a Tokyo market - Japan is the main destination for Turkish tuna (image by stewart, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

No, this is not another story about the crazy things we feed to our farm animals, but rather yet another sad tale of failure in fisheries management … and yet another nail in the coffin for bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean.