All of our lives depend on the health and well-being of our oceans.

Sushi-Zanmai chain owner Kiyoshi Kimura has forgotten how important our oceans are to every person on the planet, and has doomed one of the fastest and most majestic ocean fish when he purchased the 612-pound Pacific bluefin tuna at a 2019 new year's auction in Tokyo for 3.1 million dollars. This marketing grandstanding got international media attention, similar to the media attention generated because of the record prices he was willing to pay for prize fish at the start of a new year for the last six years.

His marketing gimmick has a much heavier price, however. Paying such an inflated price for a fish is bound to increase the overfishing of a species of fish that is considered potentially at risk of becoming endangered.

Status

The International Union for Conservation and Nature has listed the Pacific bluefin tuna as "vulnerable," which means a species is likely to become endangered unless the circumstances threatening its survival change. According to the 2016 stock assessment, Pacific bluefin tuna are overfished and subject to overfishing. NOAA Fisheries first determined the Pacific bluefin tuna stock to be overfished in 2013. The 2016 assessment completed by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-Like Species in the North Pacific Ocean found the stock is still overfished. That assessment estimated that the spawning stock biomass was at about 2.6 percent of the level it would be had the stock never been fished.

Please help us show Sushi Zanmai that their founder's marketing gimmick of paying exorbitant prices for fish and increasing overfishing fervor will no longer be an effective way to increase the reputation of his sushi restaurants.

Please sign this petition, and boycott Sushi Zanmai until they promise to only use sustainable seafood and to stop grandstanding at the detriment of our oceans.