PAMELA S. TURNER

Atlantic bluefin tuna are horribly overfished. Three-fourths of the Atlatnic bluefin catch is consumed by Japan, which prizes the rich red meat as sashimi. The fish is so highly prized that the best can sell for over $400 a pound wholesale. The United States, complicit for years in Atlantic bluefin overfishing because of the obvious economic incentives, has finally gotten behind the total ban scientists think is necessary to preserve the species. Japan opposes the ban. A Washington Post article quotes a bluefin trader as saying the Japanese government had no choice: "We Japanese eat tuna." Imagine if this guy said: "We Japanese eat panda."

A 513-pound bluefin tuna just sold at auction in Tokyo for $177,000. That's $345 per pound. Since the 1950s bluefin tuna stocks have crashed, and over 90% of these fish, the Porsches of the ocean, are gone. Guess why?

A long ARRRGGGHHH--though the European Commission recommended that all international trade in bluefin tuna be banned under CITES (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species) a minority of EU members blocked the plan, including Spain, the Darth Vader of European overfishing. For years the Europeans have been setting unsustainably high bluefin quotas and then blithely exceeding those quotas. A Danish scientist predicts the Atlantic bluefin population will crash within a few years.