There's no excuse. Greenpeace have done a report (1.7Mb pdf) on Britain's tuna-eating habits, and it's truly appalling. I never understood the "but it's dolphin-friendly" argument when tuna themselves are so endangered. I may be a smug vegetarian, but surely, my meat-eating friends, there have to be some limits? Would you eat a rhino? A polar bear? A mountain gorilla?
The report's key findings include:
- The UK is the second biggest tuna market in the world, consuming 700 million tins in 2006.
- There are twenty-three tuna populations in the world, and nine are fully fished, four are over-exploited, three are critically endangered, three merely endangered, and three are vulnerable to extinction.
- 90% of the global population of predatory fish (like tuna and shark) has already been wiped out.
- The use of long lines in the Pacific is one of the factors behind a 95% loss of leatherback turtles over the last three decades.
- Between half a million and 1.4 million sharks die on long lines in the Western Pacific alone.
- For every thousand tonnes of tuna caught in so-called Fish Aggregation Devices, one hundred and eleven thousand other animals were caught, including sharks, rays, marlins and sea turtles.
Even the Japanese, the biggest tuna consumers, are cutting down because of stock collapse, while here it's sold for cat food.
