All Aboard the Tuna Rollercoaster! Join the King of Fish for a Wild Ride that Involves Ernest Hemingway and (of course) Jane Fonda

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A bluefin tuna can grow to the size of a car, weigh twice as much as a grand piano, swim as fast as a running lion, and keep its muscles at human body temperature even in the ocean's coldest depths. It's also wildly delicious, with a sweet, briny, but meaty taste and a melt-in-your mouth texture that has made it the most expensive fish in the world, with a single bluefin selling for a record-breaking $3 million in 2019. Not bad for a fish that, until recently, New England fishermen used to have to pay to dispose of. This episode, we've got the story of how the king of fish went from the coin of the realm in ancient Byzantium to cat food before bouncing back, in a tale that involves Alexander the Great, Ernest Hemingway, and a couple of Canadian coffin-makers. But popularity has proven a double-edged sword for the bluefin: in the past few decades, it's been fished almost to extinction, while also becoming the poster child for saving the oceans. These days there's big news in tuna world, and, for the first time in years, environmentalists and scientists have hope for the bluefin's future. So is it time to start ordering maguro again at the sushi bar? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It is the most prized tuna species on the market.
0:08.4	Highly sought by master sushi chefs in Japan and the world over.
0:13.1	In January, a single bluefin tuna sold for just under $400,000.
0:19.7	Look at the cuts of premium bluefin total.
0:22.4	The marbling, the fat, it might be the greatest thing I've ever eaten in my life.
0:28.2	The bluefin tuna is the poster child for overfishing globally.
0:31.5	Consumers can help by avoiding bluefin tuna, don't buy it if you see it on the menu, don't
0:36.2	buy it on the ports, it's overfished, we need to give that species a break so it can recover.
0:42.3	To eat bluefin or not to eat bluefin, that is the question.
0:47.1	Or at least one of the questions this episode, Hamlet, was definitely wrestling with this
0:51.4	one back in the day.
0:53.0	It's a question that involves fish the size of a car that can turn into a speeding bullet
0:57.6	and zip across the ocean.
0:59.2	Fish that are worth their weight in gold, even though until really recently, you used
1:04.3	to have to pay to dispose of them.
1:07.0	This episode, we're telling the curious tale of the bluefin tuna, king of all tunas.
1:13.1	Really, king of all fish.
1:14.5	It's a tale whose characters include Ernest Hemingway, sushi masters, and international
1:18.9	crime lords.
1:20.1	But really, this is a story about how we took one of the most amazing and the most expensive
1:24.6	fish and very nearly wiped it off the face of the planet.
1:28.0	Shakespeare eat your heart out.
	...

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