Tuna

Tunas are the Ferraris of the ocean—extreme performance machines that sacrificed everything for speed. Fourteen species evolved regional endothermy independently, maintaining muscle temperatures 10-20°C above ambient water through counter-current heat exchangers called retia mirabilia. This 'warm-bloodedness' in a fish produces 3× the power output of cold muscle, enabling sustained speeds of 50 mph and transoceanic migrations spanning 5,000 miles. No other fish comes close.

The Investment Paradox

The performance comes at extraordinary cost. Tunas must eat 25% of their body weight daily to fuel their metabolism. They cannot stop swimming—ram ventilation requires constant forward motion to push water over their gills. There is no idle mode, no coasting, no rest. A tuna that stops moving suffocates. Everything about their anatomy is optimized for pursuit predation: torpedo body, retractable fins, specialized blood vessels, and swimming muscles that operate like mammalian tissue.

Tunas represent the maximum possible investment in a single performance dimension—and the vulnerability that creates.

This total commitment to speed made tunas apex predators across the world's oceans. It also made them the most commercially valuable fish on Earth: $40 billion annually at final point of sale, with a single bluefin selling for over $3 million at Tokyo's Tsukiji market. The biological investment that enabled tunas to dominate their ecological niche also made them irresistible to the human economy.

The Tragedy

By 2010, Pacific bluefin had crashed to 2.6% of unfished levels. Southern bluefin declined over 90% from 8.5 million tonnes to under one million. The very traits that made tunas successful—long-distance migration across jurisdictional boundaries, high metabolic demands requiring rich feeding grounds, and slow maturation rates—made them catastrophically vulnerable to industrial fishing. Species optimized for oceanic dominance had no evolutionary preparation for purse seines and longlines.

The business parallel is the high-performance startup burning capital to dominate a market. Tunas and venture-backed companies share the same strategic profile: massive resource consumption enabling capabilities competitors cannot match, with no ability to throttle down when conditions change. WeWork raised $22 billion pursuing tuna metabolism—unstoppable growth requiring continuous fuel. When funding contracted, the company nearly collapsed. Tunas and high-burn companies both demonstrate that optimization for growth creates existential dependence on resource availability.

Recent conservation efforts show recovery is possible when harvest matches sustainable yield. Several tuna stocks have rebuilt since 2014 as management improved. But the lesson stands: extreme specialization enables extreme success until environmental conditions shift. The warm-blooded fish that conquered the oceans became the fish most vulnerable to human appetite.