If you're in the mood for a tuna poke bowl or an old-school tuna niçoise salad, here's a tip: Don't hit up the Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland. It has been nearly six years since chef Jonathon Sawyer became a "tuna evangelist" after attending a meeting of like-minded chefs at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was there that he made the decision to forgo tuna — both in his personal life and on the menus at all four of his restaurants.
It wasn't always easy. Turning down the chance to eat famed chef Eric Rupert’s mouthwatering thin-sliced tuna over a foie gras torchon took some Superman-like strength, but for Sawyer, the mission is an important one. He's not trying to get people to give up tuna altogether. Rather, he's trying to raise awareness of the sheer quantities that are coming across our collective plates and serve as a gentle warning that all that fish is coming from a limited resource.
A new study, published in Fisheries Research, reveals that the sheer amount of tuna being taken from our seas, including some species considered "vulnerable," has increased by an astonishing 1,000% in the last 60 years — a rate that some scientists are saying is unsustainable.
The study, which looked only at larger industrial catches, says we're pulling nearly 6 million metric tons of tuna from the oceans each year. (The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization's data — which include artisanal fisheries as well as industrial catches — estimate that the overall annual harvest is closer to 7.4 million metric tons of tuna.)
The study's findings suggest that current public reporting efforts to accurately document the extent of the world's tuna catch have been insufficient and could be affecting fisheries management decision-making. "The big surprise for me was how much [southern] bluefin tuna had declined," says lead author Angie Coulter, who conducted the research while working with the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. The historical decrease in southern bluefin tuna populations is eye-popping. In the 1960s, southern bluefin tuna from the Indian Ocean accounted for 36% of tuna catches there. Today, it has fallen to less than 1% of the catch.
The study shows that not only are we taking more tuna from the oceans than ever before, but we're also harvesting them farther from shore. Industrial tuna fishing now covers somewhere between 55% and 90% of the global oceans, fueled in part by extensive government subsidies.
So, what does all this mean for tuna fans? If chef Sawyer has his way, more of us would be open to spreading our seafood choices across a wider variety of tasty species to help ease some of the pressure on tuna. Coulter says even being more aware of exactly where our tuna is coming from is a good first step.
