Brian Skerry's Image

Every day, bluefin tuna are brought from all over the world to the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo.

Laid out across the floor, they are auctioned off before sunrise, destined for Japanese raw-fish sushi and sashimi. In 2009, a single bluefin tuna sold for nearly $180,000. Brian wandered through warehouses containing the finned, gutted and skinless bodies. 'It was disturbing', he says, 'to see such magnificent and increasingly scarce animals transformed into commodities. The ocean is not a grocery store for our convenience, and we can't continue to fish at this scale without serious consequences.' But for the commodity dealers, continuing to overfish tuna makes economic sense: the fewer tuna there are in the world, the higher the price they fetch.