Sorta like catchin' 200 lb. totuava, eh Kenny?
I had read that Mitsubushi is investing in bluefin tuna and cryovac deep-freezing them. Once the Japanese have eaten everything in the wild, they plan on breaking out the frozen ones and selling them for $$$$ profit.
Well, let's just hope that the Japanese economy tips from deflation to hyper-inflation as many economists are now anticipating.
Stuart- your comment about "decreasing demand creating lower prices" definitely works (in a much uglier fashion) when an "abundant" resource has been over-harvested to the point of near total depletion.
If the price of Tuna keeps increasing faster than Japanese citizen's ability to pay, then it is true that wild fish will be safer as the cost of catching them goes into overdrive and becomes a negative value adder- much as the increasing input costs of planting corn (fuel, labor, fertilizer) in the 70's made it a losing proposition for farmers to grow corn- which reduced the supply of corn in the market and caused corn prices to ge berzerk.
I think the principle is the same here- depleting stocks of wild fish can only result in vicious price moves that snap the market back and allow the populations to recover while people deal with the economic after effects of the inflationary price explosion.
That Mitsubishi move to stockpile frozen fish may turn out to be a great investment for them, and a benefit to wild fish populations all at the same time. We can only hope.