Pacific bluefin tuna moving towards extinction: IUCN Red List

Due to the high demands of the Pacific bluefin tuna for sushi, the fish is now at the verge of extinction, according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species published Monday.

The Pacific Bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) has been assessed as vulnerable to extinction, one step below endangered. It joins the Atlantic Bluefin (T. thynnus), which was assessed as endangered in 2011. Similarly the American eel (Anguilla rostrata), which fishermen have turned to after causing the near-extinction of Japanese and European eels, has been listed as endangered.

"The Pacific Bluefin Tuna market value continues to rise," said the organization's tuna and billfish specialist Bruce Collette, according to Time. Without curbing catches of juvenile fish, he added, "we cannot expect its status to improve in the short term." The group estimates that the population has diminished by 19% - 33% over the past 22 years.

The updated list was released by the IUCN at its once-a-decade World Parks Congress in Sydney as it called for better management of protected areas, where some of the decline in species levels has taken place.

"Each update of the IUCN 'red list' makes us realise that our planet is constantly losing its incredible diversity of life, largely due to our destructive actions to satisfy our growing appetite for resources," IUCN's director-general Julia Marton-Lefevre said.

"But we have scientific evidence that protected areas can play a central role in reversing this trend," she added.

The IUCN Red List has grown dramatically over the past two decades, not just because of the increasingly level of threats faced by species around the world but also because of efforts to assess all species around the world.