Bruce Bisset: Seas sold for 30 pieces of sushi

Seems to me what we want to do constantly trumps what we need to do - even when it's a matter of species survival.
Not just our own, but all species - and the Earth itself.
We need to stop changing the climate, but don't want to give up our luxuries to do it.
We must stop polluting the planet, but continue to consume to a throw-away model.
And we know thousands of species are being extinguished through over-exploitation, but we refuse to acknowledge that, as a result, our own may soon follow.
Why? Because there's too much profit in it - and money, apparently, is what we value more than life.
Consider what we are doing to the "last frontier" - the sea.
We're primarily a water world; most of the globe is blue.
That blueness hides myriad spectacular environments, most of which we, being land animals, know little - and care less - about.
But we know enough to know the bounteous oceans which a century ago were teeming with life are in danger of being stripped bare, certainly as far as edible finfish and seafood species are concerned.
Surely even the most sceptical must begin to think there's a problem when local snapper prices threaten $50 a kilo.
While we remain in denial that stocks of snapper might be heading for collapse, we know others - such as tuna - are already in or entering that phase of decline. But we still down cans of the stuff by the million.
We rightly protest fishing methods that see other species caught as bycatch and thrown away - turtles, dolphins, birds too - but still opt to buy the cans of Pam's "sustainably caught" tuna over Sealord's still-indiscriminate catch without thinking about the fate of the fish themselves.
Tuna are magnificent creatures, many living twice as long and growing several times as large as the average human.
They are also highly prized as food, especially by the Japanese who can pay $1000 or more per kilo for fresh bluefin for sushi - and that's wholesale.
No wonder the United Nations has baulked at banning trade in Southern bluefin. The species is critically endangered, with 95 per cent of the stock disappearing in the past half-century, but when a single fish can be sold for $500,000 the trade appears too valuable to stop.
Doubtless why, this week, two more bluefin species - Atlantic and bigeye - were added to the endangered list.
Of course soon there will be no more bluefin left to catch. What price the economic argument then?
Same goes for whales. The International Whaling Commission meets this week for another round of debate over so-called "research" whaling - but in the wake of the tsunami word is delegates will go softly on Japan, especially as many fishing-fleet towns were hardest hit by that disaster.
Sorry, but I'm tempted to hit them while they're down. That whole industry mocks the IWC convention, and with the Sea Shepherd ships harassing them and the ports barely functional why not use those excuses to tell them enough's enough.
Especially as they have no scruples in buying votes to get away with whale murder.
Meanwhile dredging for minerals is a fast-growth industry, especially as the Japanese - busy, aren't they? - have just announced finding millions of tons of rare earth deposits in various spots in the Pacific.
These substances - such as the metal, yttrium - drive technology manufacture and with 97 per cent currently mined in China everyone's eager to break that near-monopoly. So expect large-scale sea-mining soon.
For all we know, such deposits could be under the waters off Hawke's Bay. Certainly we've got exploration for oil off East Cape and Canterbury and in the Great Southern Basin; and government seems keen to see known deposits of molybdenum and nickel exploited.
Unlike visibly in our national parks, they'll probably have little trouble with consents where it's hidden under the waves. Regardless of the impacts - if they even bother to investigate.
Funny, I could have sworn an Oceans Policy existed based on the need to sustain our precious patch of sea.
Oops! Silly me. A need can't compete with a want, can it.
That's the right of it.
Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.