It's no wonder that soon you may not be able to find Tuna– especially the Bigeye and yellowfin species. The United States and the UK eat more than any other country. Its the most popular tin-canned fish in the UK.
At the same time, a Bluefin tuna sold for 155.4m yen – a new record for a single fish – at the first auction of 2013 at Tsukiji fish market, in Tokyo, Japan where it is considered a delicacy.
A new study done by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and published in the prestigious journal Science found that five out of the eight tuna species are at "risk of extinction".
The problem is that this species is heavily commercialized. The biggest reason for the industry being skipjack- the tuna that is most likely in cans. The good news is that it's not overfished just yet, but it could be. The other problem is because of the methods used to catch this particular fish, there are often other fish caught in the nets, specifically young yellowfin and bigeye. This causes more problems for populations that are already threatened anyways.
if conservation methods aren't put in (and enforced) place, it is a real possibility that these fish could go extinct.
Many of the tuna species are at the top of the marine food chain and their extinction could have serious effects on other species. They also tend to live a long time and are slow to reproduce, meaning that it is harder for populations to recover.
It's also important to note several of the fish that are caught often times have never reproduced.
In 2014, even with the increase of tuna off the coast of California, there was an ocean wide decrease of about four percent and less are surviving to full adulthood.
There are people that think the limit should be lowered but that could mean a major blow to areas that rely on them.
"I think the global tuna fishery worldwide is overfished, and it's going to collapse if we don't take some reasonable steps," said Paul Hoofe, a Newport Beach fisherman who is a California representative for the International Game Fish Association in an article posted on the San Diego Union-Tribune.
In June 2016, a dozen environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity, filed a petition with the federal government seeking to list bluefin tuna on the endangered species list.
If the current trends continue, the species will soon be functionally extinct in the Pacific, and the frozen bodies held in a few high-security Asian warehouses will be the last gasp the species.
