This Is War

Some weeks ago I remember being working as a volunteer in a project for the conservation of cetaceans somewhere in the North Sea. I also remember having conversation with the people of the team about the consequences of depleting the oceans. The leader of the project made some comments about the increasing number of jellyfish (basically the consequence of tuna overfishing). But this point was not something new to me, in fact, I belong to one of the main countries that the more overfish the oceans: Spain. It's not something new in this country to have in summer news about jellyfish invading our beaches. The point is the way people understand the reality because no many are really aware of what's happening with the tuna population around the world. Things continue happening as some weeks and years ago... the war continues... and the worse is that the problem is getting worse.

Has something changed since 2007 when I wrote the following lines?...

July 3rd, 2007. I could recently read in the newspapers that authorities had declared war to jellyfish... Oh mine!... I continued reading and it seemed that the only real politicians and civil servants worried about the subject were those from the environment agency, in fact they were the only ones who put the finger in the wound: the lack of natural predators has boosted the presence of the jellyfish in our seas (and thanks God we have recently had a reasonable rainy season).

I'm really sure that more than one will have wondered about who is naturally supposed to be pillaging the jellyfish population.The answer is Mr. Tuna and Ms. Turtle. And now the cornerstone is... Where the hell are the tunas and the turtles? Why are their populations so low? Basically there are two answers:

1. We're fishing tuna four times over the sustainable level. 
2. Turtles are being jeopardised troughout really questionable methods of fishing.   

Although you can see the shelves of the supermarket plenty of tuna tins, it would be really suitable for you to reduce the consumption of this fish (in fact I left it some years ago). I would like to think that consumers and politicians are going to do their bit but let me doubt about it... Above all because the problem is developing faster than reactions being carried out to fix it.

If only the history didn't repeat as it happened to cod, but I'm afraid that there won't be a happy end, man is the only animal to stumble over the same stone twice. 

Good night.