I once asked my mother what was exactly across the planet from where we lived (Lyon, France). She told me that was New Zealand, and as a seven year old, I was as impressed as it gets. I imagined a country completely different, with people standing on their heads and doing everything backwards. As far as I was concerned, New Zealand must have been the exact contrary of France, in everything.
It turns out, as I found out a few year later, the only thing on the other side of the planet is a lot of water and less and less fish, (I also found out New Zealanders do not, in fact, stand on their heads) but for the purposes of this story, we'll pretend my Mom was right.
Despite the planet sitting between the two countries, New Zealand and France have a lot in common. It seems that the ministry of fisheries of both countries have in mind to wipe out bluefin tuna from our oceans. We're talking about different types of bluefin tuna, of course.
In New Zealand, you can find southern bluefin tuna (SBT), which has been happily overfished by several Pacific nations to the point of being listed as critically endangered by the IUCN. The next step on the IUCN Red List is "extinct in the wild". Apparently, the NZ ministry of fisheries decided to make a spirited effort to get it to reach that point, as they are entering talks to increase the catch of SBT by 25%. There's a word we use in Greenpeace for ideas like that: STUPID.
Following my logic as a seven year old, though, this means that France should be doing exactly the opposite: going the extra mile to ensure the survival of bluefin tuna. Not so.
On the other side of the world, lives the northern bluefin tuna (NBT). This one isn't doing too good either. Stocks are estimated to be less than 80% of their original levels in the Mediterranean. A large part (around 80%) of the tuna caught in the Med go directly to Japan where bluefin tuna is a delicacy used for sushi. There is a major problem, and it is not a secret. That is why, last summer, President Sarkozy announced France would support listing NBT on CITES Annex 1 - essentially stopping the international commerce, to give the species a chance to recover. However, the current fisheries minister, Bruno Le Maire, begs to differ. He doesn't think the situation is so bad and opposes the measure announced by Sarkozy. The fisheries lobby is a powerful, if small, one in France, and looking at how much a single tuna can fetch in Japan, their logic makes a bit more sense - as long as the fail to think about the future. No fish means no fisheries, and to keep fishing for NBT the way they are right now means the entire industry is committing suicide. A good fisheries minister ought to see that.
Thankfully, New Zealand and France have other common points, one of them being a Greenpeace office going our of its way to stop the disaster. New Zealand put out a bluefin tuna cyberaction to call the government on their crazy ideas, and Greenpeace France is talking to M. Le Maire about bluefin tuna on Facebook.
(Oh, and if you want to go the extra mile and have a twitter account, tell Andy Murray eating sushi in Nobu isn't actually cool.)
Because if we let bluefin tuna go extinct anywhere, then the world would truly be upside down.