The world is running out of tuna, the result of over fishing and illegal fishing. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) has been told that stocks of the giant bluefin tuna are close to collapse with catches in 2008 at three times the ICCAT limit.

The problem is in the Mediterranean where there is lots of illegal fishing. The Cape Cod Times reports that US negotiators want to give it an endangered species listing in order to control a rogue Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean that European scientists believe is driving the stock toward collapse. Doing that is a high risk strategy because it would stop trade to Japan where it is turned into high quality sushi. Instead, it would flood the US market, driving down the prices paid to fishermen.

But Barry Estabrook's Politics of the Plate site suggests we need a desperate solution. He puts the blame squarely on ICCAT, pointing out that tuna levels have gone down 82% in the entire Western Atlantic since it started managing things.

And he gives an alarming warning: "There is a strong likelihood that someone in this generation will be the last human to eat a bluefin tuna. By most scientific accounts, the species hovers on the brink of extinction, if it hasn’t already crossed that line."