The Tragic Tale Of The Last Tuna.(Cover Story: Who Is the Greenest of Them All?; SPECIAL REPORT)

Byline: Benjamin Sutherland

At current rates, the Mediterranean bluefin will soon be commercially extinct.

France scores high over all but fails to protect marine wildlife.

The dozen-or-so Libyan tuna boats moored in the French Mediterranean port of Sete are a bitter reminder to French fisherman Denis Biascamano of a wrecked career and an industry gone bad. The boats carry Libyan flags, but it's common knowledge that they are French--captains, crews and capital. With tuna hard to find, Libyan waters are compelling: tuna are more abundant, and what few police patrol the sea can be bribed, says Biascamano. After years of making a decent living, Biascamano recently quit the "dirty business" of fishing. "We lost a lot of money the last two years," he says.

Mediterranean fishermen are hurting: stocks of bluefin tuna, by far the sea's most economically important fish, are dangerously low. Although many countries share the blame, the chief culprit, say fisheries experts, is France. Its annual quota accounts for one fifth the entire legal quota of Atlantic tuna for all countries. Factor in illegal catches, and France's take climbs to about one third of all Atlantic tuna caught last season, according to Greenpeace. When it comes to bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, "France is the worst," says French biologist Daniel Pauly, director of the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia.

That might sound strange for a country that scores 10th overall on Yale and Columbia's Environmental Performance Index. France does well on many measures but sets aside no significant ocean tracts for preserving wildlife (it gets a zero in "marine protected areas" along with nations like Haiti and Nigeria). And although France scores well in the "marine trophic index"--countries with small average fish sizes score poorly, an indication that they have fewer breeders--the weight of tuna is dropping. Eight years ago Biascamano's average tuna weighed 140 kilograms; last year the figure was 80kg. Also, the EPI doesn't take into account France's abuse of the stocks of other countries, such as Libya's.

Bluefin ...