A typical Sunday night for me includes scrolling aimlessly through either Hulu or Netflix until I find something that looks like it won’t put me to sleep as soon as I turn it on and isn’t South Park or Friends; I’ve seen every episode in both of those series twice. In the middle of my routine this past week I came across a rather intriguing documentary titled Sushi: The Global Catch. The description told me that it was a history of the food, and how it became an international favorite from its origin as a casual Japanese street cuisine. So I thought to myself, “Hey, I like sushi, and I get at least one Snapchat a day of sushi with the caption "bae" and a heart-eye emoji, so why not learn some more about it?” Man, did this documentary follow through on that promise.

As the film begins, you learn valuable little tidbits of trivia that leave you thinking to yourself exclamations such as “hmm” or “huh.” For instance, in Japan, apprentices to sushi chefs work for seven years before they are trusted to prepare and serve sushi to customers (hmm), and wasabi was introduced into the world of sushi before refrigeration had been invented because of its unique ability to kill germs, such as E. coli and other bacteria (huh). Both being the type of facts you might use on a first date to a sushi restaurant to give off the impression that you are cultured and worldly.

From here, director Mark S. Hall takes some time to explore the meteoric rise in the popularity of sushi in the last 20 years. Japanese restaurants started to expand their reach across the globe in the early 1950s. However, there were problems with those restaurants being able to procure quality fish for their customers due to long delivery hours by boat and ineffective means of refrigeration. In 1971, Japanese Airlines developed a refrigerated container that kept fish fresh for the entire flight; conundrum solved. Now, even Podunk towns, such as the one I grew up in, have sushi restaurants. There is even a product on the market called a “Sushi Popper,” which, and you can’t make this up, is a Push-Up Pop made entirely of sushi. What will they think of next?

The mood of the film changes drastically as the focus shifts to the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world, located in central Tokyo. We see enormous slabs of whole tuna being laid out on pallets. These tuna are often are larger than the people moving them. Unbeknownst to me, who honestly thought tuna were some tiny sardine-sized fish, the bluefin tuna is the Porsche of the Sea. It can grow to be over 1,000 pounds in weight, 10 feet in length, and reach top swimming speeds of 50 mph. Imagine that.

Using flashlights and rubbing pieces of fat in their hands to test the oil content, wholesale buyers are seen in the film inspecting fish with the utmost scrutiny. They purchase huge quantities of the precious tuna and then ship them all over the world. One world-renowned wholesale buyer is quoted as saying he ships tuna to cities like New York, “every single day.” The fish are sold in an auction format, meaning they are awarded to the highest bidder. Two years ago a Japanese business owner paid $1.76 million for a 488-pound specimen, setting the record for the most expensive bluefin tuna. These types of statistics make you chuckle in disbelief.

Unfortunately, the reason for the inflated price of the bluefin is far from a laughing matter. Ever since countries such as the United States and China started to develop a taste for sushi, and bluefin in particular, the fishing rates of this species have increased dramatically. The World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, estimates that since the start of large-scale bluefin tuna fishing in the 1950s we have managed to wipe out 96.4 percent of their total population. If you are an unsympathetic individual, you may be asking, “why should I care?” To that I say, bluefin tuna are at the top of the food chain, they feed on numerous species of medium-sized fish, and are too fast to be hunted by any other predator.

This means that the bluefin tuna is crucial to the balance of the ecosystem. So crucial that if they go extinct all wildlife in the ocean could also be in danger. Scientists from the WWF suggest at this rate the ability to dine on wild-caught fish could be a thing of the past as early as 2048. In order to save the species the sushi eating population needs to drastically change its eating habits by choosing fish that are harvested more sustainably.

This is unchartered territory for Americans, who notoriously lack self-restraint. In the United States, we eat 40 billion hamburgers each year and never once have to think about that number threatening the existence of cows, but I digress; back to sustainability. If you are like me, and simply reading this article gave you quite the ironic craving for sushi, then you can download an app at www.seafoodwatch.org that will tell you what kinds of fish in restaurants can be eaten without endangering an entire ecosystem. Thus allowing you to avoid a dining experience riddled with guilt.