Killing Blue Tuna

credit:washpo

Blue tuna's going extinct. Guess why:

For years, Europeans have been overfishing bluefin tuna that breed in the Mediterranean. In fact, for the past four years European Union officials have set catch quotas at nearly double the levels their scientists recommended, and fishermen have exceeded those already-elevated quotas by 50 percent each year. In the United States, the federal government has imposed greater restrictions, but fishermen can still bring home bluefin tuna they incidentally catch as the fish are spawning each spring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Great lede, btw.

For centuries, humans have mythologized the bluefin tuna, an elite, warmblooded fish that can traverse the Atlantic basin in less than a month and a half and grow to weigh three-quarters of a ton. Romans put bluefin on their coins; Salvador Dali painted them.