In recent years, many of the earth's most prized species have been endangered due to the despicable behavior of some humans, but a recent piece of good news has broken the deadlock. Today, from fish to Komodo monitor lizards, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has updated its list of the world's most endangered species. The Atlantic bluefin tuna schools from the Mediterranean sea near Sardinia, Italy, are once again back to life, and these popular tuna species are no longer endangered, and the species has recovered from overfishing, which is incredible.
It is known that there are two species of bluefin tuna, a yellowfin tuna and a albacore tuna that are no longer critically endangered or have been completely removed from the main international endangered species list. The unexpectedly rapid recovery shows the success of efforts to end overfishing over the past decade, but tuna is not the only species scientists discussed at the 2021 World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France, which was organized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). For example, more than a third of the world's sharks and rays are still threatened with extinction due to overfishing, habitat loss and climate change. Scientists believe that sustainable fisheries are possible, and that humans can eat fish in a sustainable way without reducing the number of fish to the point of extinction.
For much of the past 20 years, the IUCN has assessed the status of more than 60 species of tuna and longmouth fish. The research team announced the first comprehensive findings in 2011, revealing the danger of extinction of some commercially caught tuna species. 10 years on, tuna is no longer endangered. This is reassuring.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) currently places the world's most endangered species on its Red List of Endangered Species, supported by 16,000 experts worldwide. The league also announced that some animals are moving in another direction, onto the Red List. A notable example is the Komodo dragon, a lizard that inhabits the island and is particularly threatened by climate change.
According to the new data, Atlantic bluefin tuna, once listed as endangered, is now the least concerned species. The same is true of yellowfin tuna and albacore tuna, both of which were considered endangered at the time of the last assessment. In addition, the southern bluefin tuna has improved from critically endangered to endangered, while the big-eyed tuna will remain vulnerable.
Most people think of tuna as just a potential dinner, but the fish themselves are huge, incredible creatures. For example, when an Atlantic bluefin tuna begins its life, its eggs are not as thick as a credit card. But in a decade, it could grow to more than 6 feet long and weigh more than 550 pounds. Tuna are ferocious predators that gallop through the ocean at nearly 40 miles per hour, swallowing their prey — whatever they swallow.
While these animals dwarf professional football players, they cannot compete with modern fishing techniques. Since the 1970s, longline fishing boats with bait hooks have been fishing the largest Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico every year. At the same time, the seine seine caught smaller juveniles feeding on the east coast of North America.
However, reducing fishing quotas and enforcing them has helped their recovery, and not only that, tuna live in the vast oceans of the world, using different regions in their life cycle. This makes managing their populations quite complicated. The number of bluefin tuna in the western Atlantic has been severely reduced since the 1970s and has not yet fully recovered.
Hope for the Komodo dragon
Another major development of the World Conservation Congress was the change in the status of the Komodo dragon. But this shift is not as encouraging as tuna.
Over the next 45 years, residents of Indonesia's Sunda Islands could see as much as 30 percent of their habitat affected by rising sea levels, prompting scientists to change the reptile's situation from fragile to endangered. Despite the imminent existential threat, Komodo dragons may have lived better than other endangered species. The Indonesian government has pledged to save the dragons and officially launched a project in 2013 that includes cooperation between regional and local governments, as well as with local communities, academia and NGOs.
Of course, conservation efforts will never end, and vigilance is needed to ensure that neither tuna nor Komodo dragons slip to the brink of extinction.