The Pacific’s once-abundant bigeye tuna, the main species known here as ahi, is being fished to the brink of collapse — like the cod, the sturgeon and the bluefin tuna before it — and the Obama administration
The Pacific’s once-abundant bigeye tuna, the main species known here as ahi, is being fished to the brink of collapse — like the cod, the sturgeon and the bluefin tuna before it — and the Obama administration doesn’t seem to care, scientists say.
Bigeye catches, notably by Hawaii-based boats, are breaking records nearly a decade after the Pacific fishery’s own scientists called for fishing less, not more. As a result, the combined adult weight of spawning-age bigeyes is down to 16 percent of the original population and falling fast.
On Dec. 5 in Apia, the capital of Samoa, members of the international tuna commission that regulates fishing in the central and western Pacific Ocean ended their annual meeting without taking any measures to rein in the ever-growing haul of industrial purse-seine ships, which catch 90 percent of the bigeyes, mostly young ones, for canning. The U.S. delegation to the meeting, several observers noted, just went with the flow.
Meanwhile in Hawaii, a lawsuit filed last month accuses the Department of Commerce of actually accelerating the decline of the bigeye. The lawsuit takes aim at creative bookkeeping that allegedly aims to wriggle out of international catch limits and increase the take of the Hawaii fleet of long-liners, which supply the fresh ahi market.
And this summer, President Barack Obama announced he wanted to ban fishing in five huge but remote areas of the Pacific, but he unexpectedly backtracked on the two areas where the most bigeye are being fished after Hawaii long-liners protested. The two areas could have served as valuable refuges for this and other species.
“So far, Obama’s been very disappointing on the oceans, especially coming after Bush,” who “promised nothing but turned out to be a marine Teddy Roosevelt,” said Douglas McCauley, a professor of marine ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara who tracks oceans policy.
Originally, native Hawaiians on canoes targeting tuna caught mostly yellowfin, which live within 300 feet of the surface. Growing to 6 feet and 400 pounds with a lifespan of 14 years, yellowfin have been clocked moving at 47 mph. When they took the bait, the woven lines flew out so fast that they would burn black marks into the canoes’ gunwales. So the yellowfin were called ahi, which means “fire.”
Later, motor boats called long-liners used fishing lines set 1,000 feet deep to catch adult bigeyes, whose warm blood and huge eyes allow them to hunt in the cold, dark depths.
“The perennial star of the Honolulu Fish Auction is the much-loved Hawaiian bigeye tuna,” enthuses the fish wholesaler Hawaii Super Fish on its website. In 2012, the Hawaii longline fleet brought in nearly 160,000 individual fishes, a record, compared to 28,000 yellowfin. Most were eaten in Hawaii.
“So far, Obama’s been very disappointing on the oceans, especially coming after Bush [who] promised nothing but turned out to be a marine Teddy Roosevelt.” — Douglas McCauley, a professor of marine ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara
Bigeyes sell for slightly more than yellowfin and are often larger and fattier. “Most people would have a hard time telling them apart, but some sushi chefs say the very best yellowfin have better flavor than the bigeye,” says Robert Bates, a documentary film director who manages Uncle’s Fish Market and Grill on Pier 38 in Honolulu. “For me, the bigeye has a more transparent flesh, like a jewel stone, than the yellowfin.”
But ironically, the bigeye isn’t being decimated, like cod or sturgeon or bluefin, for its tastiness, but for the company it keeps.
Young bigeyes, when they are between one and three years old, like to hang out with similar-sized adult skipjacks (a much smaller and leaner tuna whose flesh is perfect for canning) when these gather around objects floating in the sea, along with sharks, rays, turtles and dolphins, forming whole ecosystems of hundreds of tons of fish.
Since the 1970s, purse seiners — much larger than long-liners — have roamed the oceans, sometimes sending forth spotter planes or helicopters to find moving schools or drifting objects, hauling in up to 400 tons of fish at a time. Some, like Korean purse seiners, mostly avoid the drifting objects and the attendant bycatch of young bigeye because these fetch lower prices from the canners. A ton of pure skipjack is worth more than a ton of Fish-Aggregating Devices catch, which is typically 85 percent skipjack and 15 percent young bigeye, with sharks and other species tossed overboard dead.
So the young bigeye are not bycatch — the term for fish involuntarily caught and discarded — or a target fish because, while they still have value, they are worth less than skipjack.
In the 1990s, some ships started dropping into the sea objects built like large pallets with bits of net dangling underneath and radio transmitters to give their locat