Still Waters - The Global Fish Crisis

[from this month's National Geographic Magazine] The Mediterranean may lose its wild bluefin tuna. High-tech harvesting and wasteful management have brought world fish stocks to dangerous lows. This story explores the fish crisis-as well as the hope for a new relationship between man and the sea. No more magnificent fish swims the world's oceans than the giant bluefin tuna, which can grow to 12 feet (4 meters) in length, weigh 1,500 pounds (680 kilograms), and live for 30 years. Despite its size, it is an exquisitely hydrodynamic creation, able to streak through water at 25 miles (40 kilometers) an hour and dive deeper than half a mile (0.8 kilometers). Unlike most other fish, it has a warm-blooded circulatory system that enables it to roam from the Arctic to the tropics. Once, giant bluefin migrated by the millions throughout the Atlantic Basin and the Mediterranean Sea, their flesh so important to the people of the ancient world that they painted the tuna's likeness on cave walls and minted its image on coins...