Breeding Breakthrough Yields Sustainable Bluefin Tuna - Or Does It?

Bloomberg reported this week that Australia-based Clean Seas Tuna Ltd. has successfully bred sustainable bluefin tuna. Not so fast, baby!

For those who may not know, the bluefin tuna has been fished to near extinction to satisfy the cravings of sushi lovers worldwide.

Casson Trenor, fisheries conservation activist and a San Francisco sushi restaurateur, says consumers need to stop eating bluefin now if the fish is to survive.

“Chefs need to take responsibility for this," says Trenor, author of Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time. "We need to stop exploiting the hell out of this fish and give them a break.”

So, mightn't farm-raised bluefin be the answer?

I see at least two problems with Clean Seas' solution. The most obvious one to my layman's eyes is the need to feed these fish with (literally) boatloads of fishmeal taken from herring, sardines, etc., that then won't be around to feed the remaining wild tuna and other carniverous pelagic fish (and whose capture involves tremendous bycatch of by the trawlers that catch them). From this perspective, the farmed tuna are not a sustainable solution - they simply are a way to convert plentiful, healthier, and potentially sustainable fish stocks into bluefin sushi for the affluent.

The second problem speaks to consumer psychology: "Oh, they're FARMING bluefin now - problem solved! The bluefin are being protected, let's move on." The misperception of the "bluefin problem" being "solved" would simply mask the wider problem of global overfishing as described in the book and film, The End of the Line.

I'm sure there are other problems with this "solution," but what do I know? You tell me - what's your take on this or any other sustainable seafood solutions?

Save the Oceans, Save the World, Make a Profit

Mother, Mother Ocean,
I have heard your call.
Wanted to sail upon your waters
Since I was three feet tall.
You've seen it all...

Jimmy Buffett, "A Pirate Looks at 40"

I can't describe myself as a pirate, and looking at 40 through the rearview mirror I flatter myself that my eyes are still good enough to make it out. Nevertheless, I have always loved the ocean. My heroes growing up were people like Jacques Cousteau, Hans Hass, Ron and Valerie Taylor -- anyone with the courage to go deep beneath the surface and the generosity to bring the mysteries of the ocean back to us in their words and pictures. Someday I would be part of that world, I promised myself at 15. It took more than 30 years for me to keep that promise.

During my long dry years, I never lost my taste for the sea. I've always loved seafood - its flavor, its texture, and the fact that I could eat as much of it as I wanted and always feel I was doing something healthy. Oh, yeah, in the 1970s they used to talk about mercury in fish, but then that went away and I always figured it must've been an urban legend, like the crocodiles in New York City's sewers. The first time I had my cholesterol checked, the doctor told me my only problem was that I didn't have enough of the good kind. His prescription: Eat more fish.

Most likely the only health advice I ever followed to the letter.

Until about a year ago, when I read the book that ruined my life: Bottom Feeder (How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood) by Taras Grescoe. There went my salmon, my tuna, my beloved shrimp! Not only was what I was eating not all good for me, but my eating habits were, quite literally, destroying the health of the planet by plundering the oceans our world depends on. From Bottom Feeder I went on to other books: Hooked (Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish) by G. Bruce Knecht; Whale Warriors (The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals) by Peter Heller; The End of the Line (How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat) by Charles Clover.

Books like these tapped into my already powerful interest in socially and environmentally responsible business practices. I had long been of the belief that the very profit motive that contributes so strongly to many of our world's problems contains the seeds of their solutions. Here, it seemed, was an environmental problem so fundamentally simple and so bound up in my most basic passions, I felt competent to take it on.

Which is what brings me to The Sea Suite.

I wanted to create a business that would be part of the solution to problems like overfishing, marine "dead zones" caused by nitrogen-rich fertilizers and other chemical runoff, the almost unbelievable problem of plastics. The difficulty was, I knew very little about the industries and the markets that cause and perpetuate these problems, and the more I researched the less simple the problems seemed. They were not a mere matter of what we put in and what we took out, but of how we related to the oceans, how we defined their value, and our ability to understand how the behavior of a farmer in a land-locked state like Iowa or a family scrimping to survive in sub-Saharan Africa cumulatively affected the seas upon which our collective survival depends. And, if that wasn't bad enough - I had to try to figure out, based on that knowledge, what kind of business could help address these issues while not requiring the business owner to neglect the material well-being of himself and his family.

Needless to say, I failed. If failure begets wisdom, I must be one of the smartest people on the planet by now. But I still don't know what I'm doing.

Which is why I created "The Sea Suite" and dubbed myself the "Sea E O." I want to know what other, like-minded businesses and businessfolk are doing to reduce our impact on the oceans and restore them to health and vitality. I could bloviate forever about what I do or don't know - what I am hoping is that others (people with the courage to take on this challenge and the generosity to share their learnings - my new heroes) will enter the conversation. Let's help each other work through our confusion and frustration, develop new approaches, and, in the end, leave the sea and the land better than we found them.