Extinction Economics

Recently I had the privilege of hearing Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd speak about Extinction Economics in Fremantle, Western Australia. Here’s a quote from another interview recorded in 05.6.2010 (http://www.treehugger.com/)

PAUL WATSON: Bluefin tuna is sort of like the cheetah of the ocean. It’s the fastest fish. It’s a warm-blooded fish. But it’s got a $100,000 price tag on its head.

What’s happening here is what I call the politics and economics of extinction. There’s money to be made by driving a species extinct. Mitsubishi has built big refrigerated warehouses and they’re stuffing those things full of bluefin tuna. The more dead bluefin tuna they stick in a warehouse, the fewer there are in the wild. And the fewer there are in the wild, the greater the price of the ones in the warehouse. If they can drive the species to extinction and the only bluefin left are the ones in Mitsubishi’s warehouses you’re looking at a one million dollar fish and profits in the billions. So, they are actually investing in the extinction of a species.