The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has warned that fetish for sushi delicacy over the last two decades is posing a threat on the future of the Pacific bluefin tuna. The announcement came at the IUCN World Parks Congress in Sydney, Australia.

The marine creature may soon find itself in the list of extinct species if nothing significant has been done to protect them from potential danger of disappearance. There are 76,199 species in the list so far and 22,143 of them are threatened with extinction.

The Pacific bluefin tuna has currently been given the status of vulnerable in the list of endangered species. The most concerning factor is many of them are trapped before they have had the chance to reproduce in the wild. The decline in the numbers of the fish has been recorded to be 33% since the 1990s.

"We have scientific evidence that protected areas can play a central role in reversing this trend. Experts warn that threatened species poorly represented in protected areas are declining twice as fast as those which are well represented", said IUCN's Director General Julia Marton-Lefevre. Marton-Lefevre added that it is high time to understand the responsibility to add on to the number of protected areas and improve the ways they are managed to save the planet's biodiversity.

The Pacific bluefin is high in demand in Japanese fish markets. Extensive hunting of the Atlantic bluefin previously came under the scanner of the IUCN, leading to set conservational quotas to be managed internationally.

According to Paulus Tak, a senior officer from Pew Charitable Trusts, a conservation group that monitors tuna populations, raising quotas is unlikely to yield the desired results of sustaining population. Instead, farming and enforcement of illegal fishing operations should be imposed as these are undoubtedly the best measures to increase the number of declining bluefin numbers, he asserted.