Tuna

Tuna, the fish that we all love.
One way or another, tuna has a part to play in our lives. Maguro is the Japanese name for tuna. Maguro Toro, means Tuna belly, is priced at RM 88.00 for 4 pieces (each about the size of your thumb) at one of the fine Japanese restaurant in PJ, well I worked there as a part time waiter so I know the price hehe~.

Well, there are some facts you have to know about tuna. There are several species of tuna. The fine one, ie top class tuna are the bluefins and the yellowfins. Bluefin Tuna is the largest, weighing up to 1000 pounds. Second comes the yellowfin. These two species are the sashimis on the dining table. Skipjack and Albacore are two smaller species, which usually end up in cans. Baby tuna is very small, weighing about 50 grams, and the route from 50 grams to 1000 pounds is a challenging one.

Alright, enough facts, I would like to highlight the problem here with consumers, especially the Japanese. Well, we certainly have a lot to thank the Japanese for, for example Japanese cars; Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki... Japanese food; sushi and sashimi... Japanese porn; you know who they are :P....Japanese technology;Sony, Toshiba... Japanese culture...etc etc.

BUT one thing that really annoys me about the Japanese is their love for seafood, and their ruthlessness in disobeying international protocols and campaigns. Whaling is now internationally banned, but the Japanese are still hunting whales. Hunting whales for what? Well according to one of my Japanese friend, they hunt whales for sashimi(again). They even have horse Sashimi!

Japan consumes some 80% of the 60,000 tons of bluefin caught on average worldwide each year. The number of bluefins is dropping. That is a fact. You dont have to attend biology class to logically know that the spawning of tuna cannot catch up with the rate of fishing. Overfishing is pushing every species towards extinction. Imagine we being the hunted, and some lions hunt 60,000 tons of human each year, imagine how long would it take to completely wipe out the human population in Malaysia? we have 26million people in Malaysia. Take the weight of an average man=60 kg. 60,000tons= 1,000,000 men. So the lions will take 26 years to wipe out all of us in Malaysia. What takes evolution 4.4 millions years to perfect is demolished in 26 years.

Friends, the ocean is crying. Sharks and tunas and squids and sea lions are crying. Do we hear their cries? Restaurants are still serving shark fin soup, and the Japanese are still hunting whales and tunas and salmons. Are we doing something for planet Earth?