Take a look at these two pictures. What do they have in common?
One is an ex bluefin tuna. Many a hungry land shark would say: “Yum Yum. That’s one heck of a sushi feast!” and the other is an iconic piece of pop culture which captivated audiences in a music video that lives on today as a Halloween ritual. Can you guess what they have in common?
For one, the souls inside these shells have both moved on, so to speak. The King of Pop has zombified through the natural passage of time accelerated by a nasty little habit called substance abuse, and Mr. Tuna has stiffened through the unnatural fishing practices of a land-based predator and his nasty little habit called greed.
The stars of these two photographs were thus both hooked on something that caused their untimely demise. The difference however, is that the 489 pound sea-faring apex predator didn’t go looking for it. In fact, he likely spent his whole life in school bettering his capacity to thrive in the fiercely competitive ocean economy, whereas our beloved MJ didn’t quite have the same level of universal intelligence and decided to feed his brain with opioids instead (not unlike what millions of ordinary North Americans do right now with many other “legal” drugs. But that is fodder for a different kind of post.)
Can you guess what the second factoid is that these two images share? Surely not a common fashion sense between the yellow-tied tuna pusher and our favorite zombie. Shudder.
No, the common bond between the subject matter portrayed here is the price tag they were able to fetch: Mr. Tuna’s body temple and the famed thriller jacket each sold for a mouth-watering $1.8 million. WOW! Not a bad catch, eh?
Ah yes, but there is always a catch. Unfortunately Mr. Tuna is worth more dead than alive as is the empire of the mighty moonwalker, which is all well and good for meeting the undead’s immediate family’s survival, but not so for Junior Tuna and what’s left of the bluefins. Sadly, their fate is on a sushi plate for the insanely rich. Or should I say: the insane rich?
Creating an inflated demand for a species on the brink of collapse with only 4% of its numbers remaining is completely insane! Hmmm. It smells a bit like shark fin soup to me.
Perhaps a twelve-step program for fish-oholics should be on the menu. Let’s start with a sobering quote taken from a National Geographic Article “Still Waters: The Global Fish Crisis“:
“Only when fish are seen as wild things deserving of protection, only when the Mediterranean bluefin is thought to be as magnificent as the Alaska grizzly or the African leopard, will depletion of the world’s oceans come to an end.”
If we wait until then, Captain Tarpals would surely pop out of Otoh Gunga and yell: “Hey, you-sa! Stop-pa dere! You-sa in big doo-doo dis time!”
And he’d be right. So let’s just skip to step 12 and carry this message forward:
Can you live without sushi?
If not, Gaea help you because your days are numbered.
But look on the bright side; your family might be able to get $1.8 million auctioning off your zombie organs for fish oil. Muahahaha.
Photo Credits:
Bluefin tuna via msn.com; Michael Jackson via Flickr Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
You’re welcome Gil. Hard to believe what people will do for sushi.
Karen
“only 4% of its numbers remaining”
That is a very very sad thing ….
Thanks for sharing this Karen … and thanks also for the spirit in which you share it 🙂
Gileeeeeeeee