Tuna sushi isn’t headed for extinction any more

IN A world that often seems to be teetering on the edge of chaos, what hope is there for defenceless fish?

The Atlantic cod off the eastern coast of Canada were once such an abundant resource that their dried flesh helped drive the colonisation of the Americas, spawning local delicacies from Spanish bacalao to Jamaican ackee and saltfish. Industrialised harvesting caused a collapse in populations in the 1980s and 1990s, leading many diners to switch to monkfish instead – until that species, too, went into decline.

It can feel like an inevitable cycle. Humans seem incapable of carrying out the most basic measures to protect common resources from over-exploitation, whether it is the carbon we spew into the atmosphere, the plastics we scatter through the environment, or the wild animals we have been hunting to extinction since the Paleolithic era.