Atlantide Phototravel / CorbisCaveat emptorTuna on sale at Tokyo's Tsukiji market, the biggest fish and seafood wholesaler in the world. Japan consumes some 80% of the 60,000 tons of bluefin caught on average worldwide each year Nearly every day at dawn, John Heitz falls a little bit in love. Leaning over a 150-lb. (70 kg) yellowfin tuna, the 55-year-old American, whose business is exporting fish, circles his forefinger around its deep eye socket. "Look how clear these eyes are." He traces the puncture where the fish was hooked, and the markings under its pectoral fin where it struggled on the line. "Sometimes," Heitz says, "I see a good tuna, and it looks better to me than a woman." Heitz, a blond Illinoisan who sports a fading Maui & Sons T-shirt and a tuna tattoo on his bicep, is an out-and-out tuna man. That's why he lives and works in General Santos City in the southern Philippines, one of the planet's great tuna-fishing ports. By 6 a.m. on an August morning, the heat at the docks — a raucous, clanging, blood-and-guts tangle of 10,000 buyers, sellers, porters and men whacking rusty knives into silver skin — is unforgiving.

Boat crews crouch in patches of shade on deck, smoking and waiting for their wages. The boats' hulls, sloshing with bloody ice water, are almost empty, only a few shiny bellies lolling in the slush. Porters have already hoisted thousands of tuna onto their shoulders and carried them to the exporters; they swarm around the fat, fresh ones whose slick layer of slime still smells like the ocean, and whose scales gleam with a hint of the yellow flush they had when blood was pumping inside them. It's one of the few quality hauls of yellowfin that has come in all week. Heitz jumps into the scrum of insults and jokes flying between the buyers and the sellers. Quality testers sink metal rods into the fish, pulling out samples of pink meat that they rub between their thumb and forefinger and smell. The biggest and best tuna will go for about $700 wholesale, and get whisked away to be washed, beheaded, gutted and packed with dry ice to catch the 10:30 a.m. flight to Manila. By the next day, the fish will be in Tokyo, Seattle or California.

By the next night, its meat will be poised between chopsticks. The world's tuna trade is an awesome 21st century hunt. sushi abu dhabi deliveryAncient Greeks used to stand on bluffs to watch for schools of tuna passing the shore. jiro dreams of sushi bitToday, fishing fleets stalk the fish across thousands of miles of ocean with helicopters, GPS and sonar. cooking sushi rice mirinIn 1950, about 600,000 tons of tuna were caught worldwide. where to buy sushi grade salmon ukLast year, that figure hit nearly 6 million tons, the prize of a chase that plays out from the Philippines to Canada's Prince Edward Island.cooking sushi rice with dashi

For some species of tuna, the chase is becoming unsustainable. In September, the European Commission recommended that the E.U. support a temporary suspension of the global trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a majestic cousin of the yellowfin sold for tens of thousands of dollars a head for its coveted sashimi meat. food delivery hotline manilaAt current fishing rates, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates that Atlantic bluefin that spawn in the Mediterranean could disappear from those waters as early as 2012. feng sushi delivery menuBut the recommended ban was shot down by E.U. member states including Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, France and Italy — all countries with a stake in the trade. yo sushi voucher december 2012

"The hunt is relentless," says Michael Sutton, vice president of the Center for the Future of the Oceans at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. sushi and buy barajas"These are the wolves, grizzly bears, lions and tigers of the ocean. buy sushi grade fish san franciscoIf you take the top predators out, the ecosystem begins to get out of balance." best place to buy sushi grade fish san franciscoOn land, when top predators like lions or wolves die off, lesser ones like baboons or coyotes flourish, throwing an entire food chain off. where to buy sushi grade fish san franciscoThe same goes for oceans. sushi grade fish san francisco

Scientists believe stocks of southern bluefin around Australia have likely fallen over 90% since the 1950s and could continue to drop. sushi soy paper or seaweedOf the world's 19 non-bluefin commercial tuna stocks, half are now overfished or at risk of going that direction, according to the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), a partnership of canning companies, scientists and the WWF.sushi in dubai marina mall That's bad news not just for the oceans, but also for John Heitz and millions of others who make a living from these fish. sushi zutaten online bestellenGeneral Santos earned its motto as the "Tuna Capital of the Philippines" when fishermen could go out in the morning and return at dusk with two or three 150-lb. (70 kg) yellowfin or bigeye, two tuna species that, like the bluefin, are sold for sashimi. sushi in oxford ms

Now, even the smallest of those tuna are at least a two- or three-day trip out to sea. sun sushi menu northridgeThese waters, like so many others, have been fished too hard for too long. seaweed for sushi benefits"General Santos lives and dies by tuna," says Heitz. jiro dreams of sushi price per plate"Now it's getting less and less. sushi dubai marina mallPeople just have to wake up and smell the coffee."sushi take out ajax General Santos is not the only place dependent on tuna. jiro sushi watch online

At 6 a.m., an auctioneer in Tokyo reaches up to ring a brass bell, alerting a group of blue-capped, rubber-booted men perusing rows of gray frozen tuna that the bidding is about to begin. how to buy sashimi grade fishHe starts to chant out the tuna's serial numbers, written on squares of paper stuck to their bellies. food delivery binondo manilaOne bidder raises his hand with an offer that the auctioneer weaves into his mantra: "4-5, 4-5, 4-5." sushi delivery ottawa orleansThat's 4,500 yen — about $50 — one of many offers made for every kilo of the frozen fish on the block that morning. sushi online helsinkiAt Tsukiji, the world's most famous fish market, tuna are sold at prices equivalent to Ivy League educations. sushi lernen online

In one of hundreds of stalls, wholesaler Keisuke Morishima dismantles a fresh 271-lb. (123 kg) bluefin snared off Oma, a small Japanese town. sushi el petit chef onlineBluefin can live for decades, growing more than 10 ft. (3 m) long, weighing up to 1,500 lb. (680 kg), and with enough muscle to propel them at 40 m.p.h. (65 km/h). yo sushi voucher november 2012Throwing his weight into the fish as he makes a cut, Morishima is philosophical. jiro dreams of sushi chicago"Some think it's endangered, and I understand their position, but what can you do by worrying about it?" he asks. jiro dreams of sushi music credits