Happy Refreshmas

March 25th....the first refreshmas of spring. hope it is a good one for you.

Bye, Bye Blue Fin

Bye, Bye Blue Fin
Blue Fin Tragedy

It was decided this week by the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES that there would be no ban on blue fin tuna fishing.

Here is a quote from the Associated Press:

“Thursday's decision occurred after Japan, Canada and scores of poor nations opposed the measure on the grounds that it would devastate fishing economies.”

This should read:

“Thursday's decision occurred after Japan, Canada and scores of other morally poor nations opposed the measure on the grounds that it would devastate fishing economies.”

It is an outright disappointment that Canada opposed this ban. Though I suppose their fishermen are desperately trying to make up for the Atlantic Cod industry they wiped out. They did not learn their lesson, they just need the money.

The word is, Japan put pressure on smaller, non-fishing countries to vote against a ban on fishing blue fin tuna. Apparently the fishing countries, save Japan and Canada, were all in favour of the ban.

Sign of the times. Rather, the sign in the Times newspaper today: “World votes to continue trading in species on verge of extinction“.

In the same article, a quote from Greenpeace spokesman Oliver Knowles:

“It is an own goal by Japan. By pushing for a few more years of this luxury product it has put the future of blue fin, and the future of its own supply, at serious risk. The abject failure of governments here at Cites to protect Atlantic blue fin tuna spells disaster for its future, and sets the species on a pathway to extinction.”

Here is how things played out in Atlantic Canada:

“The cod stocks failed because of greed,” says Dr. Richard Haedrich, a respected fisheries biologist at Newfoundland’s Memorial University, “People wanted all the money they could get out of the fish.”
After greed, the answer gets more complex, involving a tangle of government rivalries and scientific arrogance. In the end, the cod were defeated by fishermen who became too good at fishing, scientists who ignored what they didn’t know and politicians who refused to make the tough decisions–until it was too late.
By the time Canada’s fisheries minister John Crosbie closed the northern cod fishery in July 1992 and threw 40,000 Canadians out of their $500-million a year industry, decades of over-fishing had decimated the ground fish stocks and virtually emptied one of the most bountiful areas of the Atlantic.”

(Source: UNESCO)

I recall that the industry blamed the reduced numbers not on overfishing but on seals or sea lions who were eating all the cod. There was a motion to hunt the sea lions to reduce their numbers. It was madness.

Countries can’t solve anything, collectively. The UN is ineffective at halting genocide. The Kyoto accord could not be ratified and enforced. Countries couldn’t come to any useful or effective agreement on CO2 emissions at Copenhagen. I am all for discussion and rationality. It never seems to work where profits are to be gained.

It is always the case of the stronger country wielding power over the smaller ones, as is common with the US and here with Japan. It is the old adage of the big fish eating the little fish. Sadly, that idiom is set to become historic as all the big fish are fast being wiped out from the Earth’s oceans. What does that say to the “big fish” countries: USA and Japan?