We might all be concerned about the UN rejecting a proposal by Monaco and the United States to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, which is spiraling toward extinction, because of lobbbying by the Japanese. As New York Times says: "Stocks of Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin dropped by more than 70 percent between 1957 and 2007, and by more than 60 percent in the last decade alone. But numbers like these are never really persuasive when commercial interests stand to lose, whether talking about tuna or sharks or salmon."
But a new report in New Scientist suggests we might also blame cookbooks.
According to this report, conservation biologists Phillip Levin and Aaron Dufault, looked at seafood recipes from 105 cookbooks published in the Seattle region between 1885 and 2007. For each recipe, they looked at the species of seafood called for, and estimated its trophic level – a measure of how high in the food chain the species sits. They found that cookbooks newer recipes were more likely to call for rarer, and therefore more expensive fish. The demand for fish reflects very much what we aspire to eat.
Levin says this may explain why so many more are eating fish like cod and tuna. As New Scientist notes, it could create "a perverse demand that could stymie efforts to restore healthy fish populations."
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