Tar balls are not likely to float up to the New England from the Gulf of Mexico, according to a Globe report on a Tuesday state Department of Environmental Protection hearing Tuesday.

As far as fish go, Paul J. Diodati director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, said the crude would only have an impact on larvae and eggs. The tiny larvae, about the size of a pencil tip, would not survive the encounter, he said.

But because bluefin tuna are known to live about 20 years and most tuna caught by the industry are between 5 and 6 years old, Diodati said, the region probably would not notice if tuna larvae died in the gulf, and in any case it would be difficult to measure…

Thomas W. French of the state’s Natural Heritage program said not many New England species spend time the Gulf.

Still as the NY Times reports in a preview of a Sunday Magazine story, it’s our appetite for sushi, not our appetite for fossil fuel that will do in the tuna.

(T)the Atlantic bluefin is just a symptom of a metastasizing tuna disease. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization reports that 7 of the 23 commercially fished tuna stocksare overfished or depleted. An additional nine stocks are also threatened. The Pew Environment Group’s tuna campaign asserts that “the boats seeking these tuna are responsible for more hooks and nets in the water than any other fishery.”

Tuna then are both a real thing and a metaphor. Literally they are one of the last big public supplies of wild fish left in the world. Metaphorically they are the terminus of an idea: that the ocean is an endless resource where new fish can always be found. In the years to come we can treat tuna as a mile marker to zoom past on our way toward annihilating the wild ocean or as a stop sign that compels us to turn back and radically reconsider.