Today is one of Japan's national holidays: it is Marine or Ocean Day, which is meant to be a day of gratitude for the blessings of the ocean.
And yet it is Japan's love of one of the seas greatest blessing, the bluefin tuna, that has the potential to lead to a catestropic collapse of their numbers, potentially even to extinction. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature estimates that unless fishing is halted, breeding stock of the bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean will be wiped out by 2012.
In London, the Fisheries Minister has joined British activists, writers, actors and artists in calling on the Japanese fish restaurant chain Nobu to stop serving endangered bluefin tuna. He joins celebraties like Sienna Miller, Charlize Theron and Sting who are saying they will boycott the chain until it removes bluefin from its menus.
So come on Japan: make this Ocean Day special by joining the UK and France in listing bluefin tuna as an endangered species and so making it illegal to sell.
