Bateau de pêche près d'Athènes - Grèce © ALTITUDE/Arthus-Bertrand Yann

Change your tuna

Today, to protect bluefin tuna, you can take action very simply by refusing to eat it. And don’t hesitate to let the restaurant owner or fishmonger know that you disapprove of this practice.
And there are alternatives as most species of tuna are not threatened: skipjack tuna, mainly used for canned food (even accounts for 59.1 % of fishing catches), as well as yellowfin tuna (24 %), bigeye tuna (10 %) and albacore (5.4 %). You don’t have to deprive yourself so make the right choice!

In the Western Atlantic, between 1970 and 2007 : 82% of bluefin tuna disappeared.

Bluefin tuna is under the threat of extinction in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean due to overfishing. However, it is not protected.

Bluefin tuna is a luxury fish. The best types of this fish weigh over 200 kilos and are worth a lot of money. One was sold for 122 000 euros in Japan! Moreover, the Archipelago imports the most bluefin tuna: it buys about 80 % of the Mediterranean’s fishing catch.

A taste for sushi and sashimi, which is also developing in France and Europe, is a threat to this fish: two thirds of animals disappeared from the Mediterranean between 1957 and 2007 and 82% disappeared from the Western Atlantic between 1970 and 2007.

To protect them, several countries, including France, asked for the bluefin tuna to be added to a convention that controls its sales and would therefore reduce fishing: the CITES. Unfortunately, Japan and some allied countries managed to prevent all such measures during the final conference of the convention, in March, in Doha, in Qatar.
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