Illegal fishing might save bluefin tuna

Believe it or not, chefs in Japan are advising restaurant guests to forget about tuna, because not enough suppliers can prove the tuna was caught legally -- while at the same time, another report indicates that 1-in-3 tuna is caught illegally.

This heartens my heart:

"Masanori Miyahara, chief counselor of the Fisheries Agency of Japan, said consumers may have to "just forget about tuna for the time being."

This is JAPAN????

I am fond of this too:
"The big Western European fishing nations - Italy, France, Spain - have started to clean up their act after years of often illegal overfishing.

"You have to realise that within the bluefin tuna, all the countries were lying," says Dr Jean-Marc Fromentin of ICCAT's own scientific committee."

Light and enlightenment are dawning.

"The Japanese, for their part, are going out of their way to show that they care about the sustainability of the fishery, particularly after Japan led an effort earlier this year to defeat a proposal to ban the Atlantic bluefin trade by the UN-backed Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites)."

But there's a problem:
"But new fleets - in less-regulated places from Turkey to Libya - are ramping up their operations."

So, the best thing to do would be to: ban trade in bluefin tuna. All of it. From everywhere.

There's a conference on November 17 in Paris. Let's hope that light continues to shine brightly.