Chicken of the Sea

Take a gander:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14133913

I have some beef with this.  And I don’t mean hamburger.

I don’t mind fish.  I’m not huge on seafood in general, but I certainly don’t hate a nice salmon steak.  Tuna is a staple of my diet.  Cheap, healthy protein, right?  My question is this: why are people still fishing in the oceans?  We certainly don’t hunt commercially significant tonnages of cows.  We farm them.

So, what’s the deal here?  One would think that commercial hatcheries would be the rule, given that no other food source that is a significant portion of a nation’s or region’s intake is hunted.  I mean, you don’t hear quotas on the tonnage of wild bovines that can be brought in by professional hunters in a given year.

Hatcheries would allow for a sustainable, measurable source of fish protein, just like farms manage the amount of beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and so on.  I mean, we farm ostriches in Ontario, for Christ’s sake.  But commercial tuna hatcheries are so uncommon that tens of thousands of tonnes of the fish are “hunted” each year.  Screams stupidity.

Maybe one day I’ll open a tuna hatchery.  Then I can have as much tuna casserole as I want.

Winning.