Mitsubishi Is Driving The Fastest Fish In The Ocean To Extinction

     Picture the scene: it is June 2011. The UN and NATO have backed militants aimed at toppling the regime of longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, which they ultimately succeed in that October. Peaceful protests being met with hails of bullets has resulted in widespread violence, and thousands lose their lives amidst a constant cacophony of bullets, mines, and mortars; so bad is the situation that no foreign civilian aircraft are allowed to fly over the Northern African nation. This is part of the Arab Spring, a wider discontent that also rocks Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Bahrain, and virtually every other MENA country, albeit in relatively smaller ways. In the midst of all of this is a pair of ships, a trimaran and an old trawler refitted by volunteers. They're not here for war, unless the fight to save the bluefin tuna can be considered such.

     They were attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden that May, but nonetheless persevere into the most dangerous nation in the world at the time to save ocean wildlife. They locate poachers taking advantage of the conflict to catch possibly several thousand tuna without fear of legal consequences. Deploying divers and facing violence by foes who outnumber them roughly five-to-one, a French jet flies overhead-- to tell the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society volunteers that they are in the wrong for trying to stop a poaching operation. They are forced to leave for the season, the second round of Operation Blue Rage seemingly a failure. They aren't entirely disappointed, however: the previous year, they were able to slice open nets (in the face of attacks with hooks and metal objects) and free 800 of the endangered fish; both confrontations would be featured in the Whale Wars spinoff Operation Bluefin, heightening global awareness about the issue. The company that owned the poaching vessel, Fish and Fish UK, would sue Sea Shepherd all the way to the nation's highest court, where Sea Shepherd was awarded a massive victory and compensated for the losses this obvious abomination of justice disguised in a PR stunt by a major corporation cost them in late 2015.

     What would cause such a dramatic fight? The bluefin tuna. You mean those little fish people kill dolphins to cram into a can of liquidy cat food? Actually, tuna are magnificent animals on par with, and, in some cases, surpassing the fascinating biology of sharks. They are called the "race horses" of the sea for their fast speed, and their magnificent silver coloring is ample: they often grow to be 225 kilograms and 2.5 meters long. They are divided into three species: Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern. All are endangered. The Atlantic clan were, in particular, having a rough year in 2010. These fish swim annually from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the Mediterranean, and the former saw the worst environmental disaster in American history in the form of the BP Oil Spill. 

     The worst pressure, however, has come from fisheries. These animals have had their numbers diminished by 90 to 97 percent in most places. They are captured alive in destructive seine nets and towed to the waters off of nations like Malta or Australia, where they are kept in cramped cages, fattened to the ideal commercial girth, and brutally slaughtered. They are mostly sold in Japan, where single fish routinely sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and the most expensive can fetch prices of several million dollars. This price only goes up as the species slides closer to extinction, and the fishing companies know this. If the species goes extinct, even better for them. They could easily stop fishing and have plenty of frozen tuna in their warehouses, but they know that the less plentiful the numbers of fish, the more profit there is to be made. Extinction would make bluefin tuna priceless.

     What kind of heartless bastards could cause such callous destruction? Mitsubishi is the primary company involved in the trade in bluefin tuna. Ask yourself this before you decide to buy a Mitsubishi: is a few bells and whistles on your car that you can just as easily get from a better company worth trading for the biodiversity of our oceans and the quality of the future of our children?