But edible. If it's a choice between no tuna and this tuna, I'll deal. I won't eat it raw though.

I wish we'd put the navy to better use than as platforms for cruise missile attacks on mud huts and park them off the breeding grounds. Then fire on any fishing boat. Do that for a couple decades and I bet the fish populations would come back sharpish.

I believe you meant bluefin.

I think you are right.

Bluefish is fairly abundant, but, alas, its flesh is oily and it doesn't make for great eating, although people do eat it.

Bluefin tuna, on the other hand... Fish flesh doesn't get much better than bluefin tuna!

Please check your sources, Andrew. All of the sustainable fish references I've read say that mackeral and sardines (and other small fish) are in pretty good shape.

Otherwise, interesting article. One of the other issues with confined fish farming is the wastewater. What's done with that in this case?

In all seriousness, maybe we could ease up on the sonar to give the dolphins a rest, too. The oceans are going to give up on us at some point & we need to start defending that ecosystem, quite literally.

To determine which will happen first-- the collapse of all the planet's ocean fisheries or the advent of a global warming induced catastrophe that will inundate us all.

Although, on the bright side, if it's the former followed by the latter, the human race could end up the antithesis of Luca Brasi-- sleeping without the fishes.

Thirty years ago I was offered a research position in the then quite new field of aquaculture (fish farming). After digging through the B.S. of its proponents, it was apparent that this was not the way to a sustainable future (yes, some of us used that term back then). I turned it down and have watched with horror what has happened in the field since then.

We appear bent on creating the last great extinction event on this planet that we can study.

"creamy flesh of tuna raised on a diet of wheat pellets from eggs produced by hormone-hopped up mothers might not be quite as tasty as soon-to-be-extinct wild tuna. What do you think?

"

We fear extinction of wild species, and at the same time we romanticize the taste of them.

Humanity went through the same process with all forms of agriculture. Over time we will make farmed bluefin as tasty as we want. Supply will meet demand. Fortunately a great deal of the demand comes from the Japanese, a people who worship technology as much as we worship nature. While western leftists react with gibbering fear to the first problem that arises in applying any new technology, the Japanese try and try again until they solve the problem.

Multiply this effect by many different industries, and you will understand why Asia prospers while we go broke.

Can we stop worrying about the fact that 90 percent of the world's big fish, including the prized-by-gourmet-sushi-lovers bluefish tuna, "have almost disappeared from the oceans since the advent of industrial fishing in the 1950s"?

As others have pointed out, farm raised salmon are inferior fish that cause significant environmental problems. Tuna are huge and require spaces so large that you couldn't create a netted "pen" large enough to keep them even reasonably healthy.

Remember, we are eating the muscle flesh of fish. If you confine them in spaces smaller than they normally inhabit, you are changing the nature of the fish.

Laff. Asia prospering is a hell of a lot less affluent than our "going broke". When they're making 25k/year per capita, we can talk. Link in sig.

Humanity went through the same process with all forms of agriculture. Over time we will make farmed bluefin as tasty as we want.

They're not cows, you idiot, they're top predators.

See any cougar feedlots around you lately?

"They're not cows, you idiot, they're top predators."

A technical problem is presented to us. Engineers and farmers work on solutions, and on whatever side effects they might involve. Salonistas respond with the ad hominem whine that characterizes their fear-ridden 'culture'.

The race, as I see it, is on... To determine which will happen first-- the collapse of all the planet's ocean fisheries or the advent of a global warming induced catastrophe that will inundate us all. -- pubius maximus

Here in the U.S. if we cut our defense budget in half we could buy off about half the world's fisherman for a few years, put a Prius in every driveway, get classroom size down while sending anyone who wanted to go to college, create a renewable energy electrical grid while still having money left over for a few good bottles of wine.

Since WWII, this has been the 800-pound gorilla in the room for any national budget decision. This is the unspoken evil in the current debate on seeing that everyone who needs help with health care can get it - cut defense spending and all of a sudden we have all this money (don't cut taxes - too many Americans and corporations are grossly under taxed to begin with - please see Denmark for an example of how it's done) for education, energy development and health care. If you aren't willing to make that switch, which is of course the case with about 90% of the elected and appointed people in Washington, you really don't care about the overall health and well-being of the country. It's that simple.

...how the decline in ocean food fish stocks squares with the ongoing increase in world population. Add in rising sea levels and a diminishing supply of potable water in many areas and things begin to look...interesting, to say the least.

Fortunately a great deal of the demand comes from the Japanese, a people who worship technology as much as we worship nature. While western leftists react with gibbering fear to the first problem that arises in applying any new technology, the Japanese try and try again until they solve the problem.-- agore

The Japanese are great at working out certain kinds of technical problems. However, they don't do well still with problems of nature because you can't always bend or shape nature to human designs without suffering "unforeseen" consequences. And in spite of the Japanese believing that they have a respect of nature unique to human kind, the fact that they are humans mean that they are vulnerable to the same avaricious tendencies as everyone else. Why the hell do you think that the Japanese fishing fleet for all kinds of fish ply every ocean in the world?

Do you know why the best toro sold at Tsukiji costs what it does? Beyond being prized as it is for it's flavor, etc., it's because a Japanese fishing vessel may have caught it off the coast of Spain, put it on ice and then had it flown to Japan with 24-hours of it being caught. Yep, that's certainly applying all available technology, except that it's the kind of technology that caused the problem in the first place.