When The Tuna Boat Came In

By Douglas V. Gibbs

According to the New York Times, the Blue Fin Tuna is in a death spiral. Perhaps. I don't know enough about Atlantic Tuna to make a determination. The Yellow Fin Tuna is more to my familiarity since the family has such a close connection to it. I've heard the stories of how my uncle Gil and his father Frank were the first to commercially pack tuna. They began a company named the Van Camp Seafood Company, based out of San Diego, and named their product "Chicken of the Sea." The Van Camps enjoyed a merger with Ralston-Purina in 1963, which is where the money was really made.

Visiting Uncle Gil and Aunt Alice as a kid was always a treat. They were the ones that exposed me to the arts, exquisite cuisine, and reading. My aunt bought me hundreds of dollars worth of books every Christmas, usually with a theme. One year all of the books might be about horses. Another year, the books were all mysteries. Once the collection of books was nothing but Science Fiction, from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov. Nonetheless, Gil and Alice did what they could to ensure I was well educated, and exposed to the things they felt I ought to be.

Interestingly, I never got the feeling from any of my family that wealth meant elitism, or a stuffy attitude. My Uncle Stan, once, picked me up to take me to the piers for a hamburger, and we chatted away about baseball cards and bicycles.

I when my Uncle Gil took my family out to a snazzy French restaurant, and my little brother, after studying the menu carefully, announced he desired a burrito. Gil obliged, vanishing for a while, and returning with a burrito for the little boy.

As a child I also heard a lot of tales about the tuna fishing, and what it was like in the old days. Gil was concerned with the environmentalists crying about the diminishing population of Yellow Tail, even though he knew, he would say, that the environmentalists were all full of crap.

That is the statement that comes to mind as I read the New York Times proclamation that Blue Fin is on death's door. One wonders, as is all of the other environmental claims, if the announcement of Tuna's death spiral is true, or just a load of bull with a trail of money attached.

I suppose when the tuna boat comes in with no catch, there will be concern, but I don't believe it will ever get to something like that. I just wonder, with the advent of Climategate, if the leftists are lying about the Tuna, or if there really is need for alarm.

Listening to my uncle, I would say it is probably a false alarm, just like the false hysteria about man-made global warming.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Tuna’s Death Spiral - The New York Times