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At sea, vessels transfer catches to cages. Tugboats tow them to coastal ranches. Once in circular pens, they're fattened for months. At harvest, they're shot in the head, hauled aboard vessels, and gutted with their heads cut off.
They're then immersed in a -2 degree Celcius seawater slush. Within hours, most are frozen onboard refrigerated vessels for shipment to destination countries. Remaining quantities are packed, air freighted, and auctioned fresh in Japanese markets.
Overfishing wreaked havoc on ocean supplies. In 2002, the once rich Balearic area off Spain faced collapse. Today, the species faces extinction. Established controls don't work. "Even the Japanese, after helping finance and set up the ranching industry, are having second thoughts."
Moreover, warnings from environmentalists and scientists have impact. Top buyer Mitsubishi promised to support sustainable fishing. Japanese officials began refusing bluefin imports, citing dubious supplier paperwork. At yearend 2009, ICIJ learned Tokyo halted Tunisian imports. Ranches there harvested more than reported catches.
In March 2010, an international effort to halt bluefin trading under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) nearly succeeded. However, Japan now considers supporting a temporary moratorium on ranching operations. Whether policy follows rhetoric isn't sure given its extraordinary growing demand.
For years, Europe and Japan were complicit in looting the seas of bluefin. Doing so created a lucrative black market. In 2006, Japan and Australia uncovered massive illegal catches, including southern bluefin, a sister Atlantic area species.
The findings were so damning they were suppressed for years. Massive quantities were unreported. Many methods were used to launder catches. Finally, Japanese officials noticed. In 2009, matters came to a head.
Millions of dollars of bluefin were rejected. Whether tough policies stay intact isn't known. Mitsubishi controls 40% of the Japanese market so its agenda matters. So far, it hasn't committed either way.
However, bluefin's future depends on how it acts and whether Tokyo's serious about protecting a valued species. If that doesn't pressure policy to trump politics, what will?
Looting the Seas (Parts II and III)
Parts II and III were much more concise than Part I.
Part II discussed taxpayer funded subsidies.
An October 2, 2011 headline highlighted the problem, saying:
"Nearly $9 billion in subsidies (since 2000) fuel Spain's ravenous fleet."
Spain's the industry's biggest player. Billions of taxpayer dollars support its money-losing enterprise. They "account for almost a third of the value of the industry." At the same time, industry players flout rules "while officials overlook fraud and continue to fund offenders," according to work done by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Other countries share culpability. However, with the EU's largest fleet, Spain matters most. What it does unaccountably, so do others.
For example, Spanish/Namibian fishing magnate Jose Luis Bastos gets enormous political favors. He and other Spanish companies catch "an estimated seven of 10 Namibian hakes in what has been considered one of the world's richest fishing grounds."
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