Everybody in the business knows that the Atlantic population of bluefin tuna is in worse trouble than the Pacific population, but how much worse?

Well, here’s one measure: Stanford University’s Tag-a-Giant program is now paying $1,000 per tag to fishermen in the Atlantic and Mediterranean who return the tags after they have caught the tuna, whereas fishermen in the Pacific only get $500 for a tag. Trust the market to tell you the truth.

Another measure of the bluefin’s scarcity value is the fact that two months ago, the owners of two sushi restaurants in Japan and one in Hong Kong banded together to pay $175,000 for a 233-kilo bluefin tuna at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market.

The primary market for bluefin tuna is sushi, and the demand is so great that the fish are disappearing fast in both oceans. [Read More]