Japan's little secret is out. fish are a renewable resource -- but not renewable enough. Blue-fin tuna in particular are being eaten faster than they reproduce – and it's not just tuna. Catches are declining everywhere. All over Asia, and indeed the rest of the world, people are discovering what the Japanese have known for centuries: fish is good for you. This may seem a benign discovery. But in the case of seafood, as with any resource, it raises awkward questions about how spoils should be divided and what happens if competing interests cannot be reconciled.
It is far from Japan's problem alone. Lida Pet-Soede of environmental group WWF says the Chinese taste for grouper, a top-predator reef fish, is destroying reefs and imperiling ecosystems. China is still only the world's sixth biggest importer, producing most of its own fish, a lot on farms. Aqua-culture may be part of the solution, though it is no panacea; artificially raised fish also need feeding, whether on marine products or on competing food sources, such as soybeans. In any case, as the taste of Chinese and other emerging consumers turns to international varieties, fish stocks will come under increasing pressure.
The idea of a war over fish is no more preposterous than that of a conflict over water or petroleum.
Read full from UK "Financial Times"