On pioneer citizen scientists
Obsession plays a really big role in this book because for data to have meaning, you need to have a lot of it. And so in the absence of lots of people doing this work [tagging bluefin tuna to see where they were travelling] in the earliest days, citizen science originated with individually obsessed people like Al. But those early citizen scientists were the inspiration for an entire net-work. It just takes one person to see how a collection of data can serve society as a whole. Take the Audubon bird counting exercise — when you convince enough people to participate in a type of citizen science then it becomes powerful.
On being one with the bluefin
Fishermen like Al get into the mind of the fish. I think a part of yourself needs to drop away and you need to be able to think like a bluefin tuna under the water. There’s a kind of empathy that a fisherman needs to have for the fish that I didn’t appreciate when I started this book. You’re developing almost a rapport with the fish.
On whether we should eat the fish
That’s the number one question I get when I start talking about this book. And, based on the recent decision by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas to follow the science and adopt a management strategy and evaluation-led model, the answer is yes, we can eat the fish. If consumers in Canada or the United States see maguro, or bluefin tuna, and it’s been caught out of the Western Atlantic stock, that is a sustainably managed fish. That goes against decades of being told that bluefin tuna is in trouble. However, don’t go overboard. This is a story of moderation.
On following the science
One of the biggest takeaways for me was that politicians need to get out of the way and let the scientists and the data guide the choices we’re making. We need to be able to put short-term interests aside and say, “What are the models telling us? Where is this going?” I think it is positive that 10 or 15 years ago a lot of scientists had given up hope that there would be positive change in the bluefin tuna sector. But that change is happening now.