In the end, the price was a little underwhelming. The prized
fish, weighing in at 180kg, was worth just 4.51m yen (UK£24,500), and its new
owner was left puzzled, the Guardian reports.
Kiyoshi Kimura, who runs a chain of sushi restaurants, said
he was surprised after securing the giant Pacific bluefin tuna for such a low
price at the first auction of the year at Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. Two
years ago, he paid a record 155.4m yen for a slightly bigger bluefin after
entering into a bidding war with a Hong Kong restaurateur.
“But it’s the best quality,” Kimura added. “I’m satisfied
with buying the best one – it has a good shape and great fat.”
On a day when Tsukiji, the world’s biggest fish market, was
bursting with energy after the New Year break, Kimura’s willingness to part
with such large sums for a single fish says much about Japan’s obsession with
bluefin tuna.
Over the holidays, TV networks devoted hours to profiling
the fishermen whose heroics on the high seas bring the prized delicacy to
millions of dinner tables; the “Ferraris of the ocean” even get a mention in
Man’yōshū, a collection of Japanese poetry compiled in the 8th century.
This year’s “big fish sale” price was lower than expected
due to a lack of rival bids and a higher number of bluefins in the waters off
Japan’s northern coast, according to AFP, but Japan’s appetite for bluefin tuna
now risks plunging the fish into commercial extinction.
The country’s diners eat their way through about 80 percent
of the global bluefin catch, while soaring demand in China and other parts of
Asia is hastening its demise.
The threat from overfishing made headlines at the end of
last year, when the International Union for Conservation of Nature moved the
Pacific bluefin from the “least concern” to the “vulnerable” category on its
red list of threatened species.
The IUCN estimates the Pacific bluefin population has
declined by 19-33 percent over the past 22 years, mainly to satisfy demand for
sushi and sashimi in Asia. Most of the fish caught are juveniles, making it
impossible for them to reproduce.
Faced with the imminent collapse of bluefin stocks, Pacific
fishing nations last year agreed to cut their catch of juvenile bluefin to half
the average for 2002-04, although environmental groups had called for a
moratorium to give stocks time to recover.
To ensure that tuna retains its place in Japanese culinary
affections, Kinki University has spent more than 40 years developing a method
of raising bluefin tuna from larvae to maturity at its two research farms in
western Japan. It recently said it would triple shipments of adult Bluefin tuna
to 6000 fish by 2020.
Most tuna farming in Japan involves catching young tuna in
the wild and cultivating them in coastal reserves – a practice that experts
believe has contributed to plummeting populations of small fish.
Kinki University, however, prides itself on a method it
calls “complete cultivation”, in which the fish are artificially raised from
egg to adulthood before the larvae are then used to start a new cycle.
Experts involved in the project say they still have a long
way to go before they can farm enough tuna to meet demand. The survival rate
for newly hatched fry is low, and rearing tuna in captivity requires vast areas
of coastal water.
Shigeru Miyashita, of the university’s fisheries laboratory,
said the rate at which researchers had successfully raised bluefin from egg to
adult – without using any fish caught in the wild – had improved over the
years. But he added that many challenges remained.
“Through the complete aqua-farming of bluefin tuna, we hope
to help ensure the stability of the world’s marine resources,” Miyashita said.
“But to make 10,000 tonnes of farmed adult tuna you need
1.6m fry. The other problem is space. Wild Pacific bluefin have the whole ocean
to swim in, but we have to raise them in a confined area.
“We started this project because we were concerned about the
future of the bluefin tuna. Japanese people love tuna – we now want to
encourage them to eat ours instead of the wild variety.”
The university’s project received a boost at the end of last
year when it joined forces with Toyota Tsusho, the trading arm of the Japanese
carmaker, to begin the mass farming of bluefin tuna hatchlings at a site in
Goto, south-western Japan.
The world’s most famous sushi chef recently added his voice
to warnings that overfishing threatened to make his menu unrecognisable within
a few years.
“I can’t imagine at all that sushi in the future will be
made of the same materials we use today,” said Jiro Ono, the 89-year-old owner
of the three Michelin-starred Sukiyabashi Jiro restaurant in Tokyo, whose VIP
customers have included the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and the US
president, Barack Obama.
“Three years ago I told the young men who work for me that
sushi ingredients will totally change in five years,” added Ono, who charges
30,000 yen (UK£162) for a 20-piece sushi set.
“And now, little by little, that trend is becoming a
reality.”
To give aficionados the opportunity to sample the fruits of
its research, the university has opened restaurants in Osaka and Tokyo that
serve 100 percent farmed tuna.
Fukako Saito, from Saitama, near Tokyo, finished every last
morsel of a seafood donburi – a selection of raw fish, including bluefin,
served on rice – during a packed lunchtime service.
“It was delicious, and I couldn’t tell the difference
between this and wild tuna,” she said. “I haven’t really thought about the red
list and what we’d do if bluefin became extinct. I guess we’d have to eat the
farmed version all the time.”
Eiichi Uesugi, a businessman visiting from Osaka, said his
tuna belly sashimi contained “just the right amount” of fat.
“I’m no expert, but I think it tastes just as good as wild
tuna,” he said.
The restaurant’s head chef, Takuya Sugimura, said there was
no compromise on taste or texture.
“One of the advantages of using farmed tuna is that the
quality is the same all year round. And if we want to cater to customers who
prefer the fatty cuts, we change the feed accordingly.
Read the article HERE.
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