Vegetarian Star

Renowned chefs Alice Waters and Dan Barber have vowed to take bluefin tuna, a critically endangered fish that’s high in mercury, off their menus as part of the Center For Biological Diversity‘s campaign to protect them.

The campaign was launched on November 30, 2010, after the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas refused to take action to protect the species. Both the Western and Eastern Atlantic varieties of bluefin have declined in numbers by 80% since 1970 and 74% between 1957 and 2007, respectively.

Bluefin spawn in the gulf of Mexico, where fishing for it there has been banned since the 80s. But after spawning, these sea creatures that may reach 10 feet and 1,200 pounds migrate through the waters of the Atlantic Sea, where they are hunted.

“As chefs and people who love to eat are shaping food fashions like never before, we ought to be getting it right. And a picture like this says we are most definitely not getting it right. If we have the power to popularize tuna to the point of extinction — which we’ve done, with dizzying speed and effect — we also have the power to get people to rethink what they eat, and that should include bluefin tuna,” said Barber, owner of Blue Hill restaurant in New York.

Bluefin is usually used in sushi, but like many species of fish, bluefin has been found to contain dangerous levels of mercury that is harmful to human health.

One study that sampled sushi from both restaurants and grocery stores found levels of mercury in the bluefin akami variety of tuna to be higher than those permitted by the USDA.

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