The wonder of the marine world is in serious danger

Streamlined, musclebound, warm-blooded and with fins that retract into body slots like a switchblade so it can attain swimming speeds of more than 40 mph, the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna is a wonder of the marine world – the Clan Chief of the Scombridae, that can weigh up to 1,500 lb. It has long been prized by sport fishermen, from Charlie Chaplin to the dentist-turned-bestseller Zane Grey, and there is nothing tentative about a tunny strike. In 1927, after a four-hour battle with one eight-foot giant, Grey wrote: ‘If it were possible for a man to fall in love with a fish, that was what happened to me. I hung over him, spellbound and incredulous.’

Alas for the ABT (as they are known in the trade), they taste so good that they have been hunted for millennia. Their flesh contains a chemical which, on death, is converted into a monophosphate closely associated with umami. Their numbers are now in decline and some think the global population is endangered.

As the Canadian journalist Karen Pinchin describes in her thoughtful, well-intentioned book, it is simplistic to ascribe this crisis solely to the Japanese obsession with sushi and its attendant near-fetishistic rituals. That is a relatively modern vogue which has gone global. In 2019, one Tokyo restaurateur bid US$3 million for a single flash-frozen bluefin carcass. But within living memory this rich, meaty flesh (‘red gold’) was regarded as no better than cat food. In Kings of Their Ocean Pinchin traces the scientific developments that suggest how stocks of this magnificent fish may be managed for the future.

Her basic structure might be called a ‘Convergence of the Twain’.