I Like Tuna but This is Ridiculous

Bluefin tuna sells for record $3.1 million at Tokyo market, but scarcity clouds celebration

A bluefin tuna sold for a record $3.1 million at the first auction of the year at Tokyo's new fish market on Saturday, but behind the celebrations hides a worrying tale of overfishing and dwindling stocks.

Kiyoshi Kimura, who owns the Sushi Zanmai restaurant chain, paid 333.6 million yen for the 613-lb (278-kg) fish at the first auction of the year, and the first to be held at Tokyo's new Toyosu fish market after last year's the move from the famous Tsukiji market.

Only $5057/lb?  A steal! Especially when you consider that the highly prized fatty belly meat is only a small fraction of the total. Oh sure, they'll eat the rest (and probably boil the head for fish stock), but it's less valuable.

The price at the predawn auction was nearly 10 times higher than the price paid at last year's auction - albeit for a considerably smaller fish - and roughly double the previous record, also set by Kimura, in 2013. There was an intense bidding war with a rival buyer who had won last year.

The winner said he was "very satisfied with the quality" of the fish but admitted he had paid much more than he had expected. "The tuna looks so tasty and very fresh, but I think I did (pay) a little too much," Kimura told reporters outside the market later, according to news agencies.

For that price, it had better be fresh.

 "The celebration surrounding the annual Pacific bluefin auction hides how deeply in trouble this species really is," said Jamie Gibbon, associate manager of global tuna conservation at The Pew Charitable Trusts. "Its population has fallen to less than 3.5 percent of its historic size and overfishing still continues today."

In response to the growing scarcity of the fish, Japan and other governments agreed in 2017 to strict quotas and restrictions on fishing, in an attempt to rebuild stocks from 20 percent of historic levels by 2034.

That has caused considerable unhappiness and some hardship in Oma.

Oma tuna is known as the "black diamond" of tuna, because fishermen still use traditional manual fishing methods, rather than trawling, allowing them to catch the fish intact.

But to stick to the quota, fishermen there said they decided to go slow in the summer and concentrate instead on fishing in the fall and winter, when tuna fetches a higher price. However, when they ventured out, they found tuna harder to find than usual and catches low, leading to fears in November that the Oma tuna could eventually disappear from the nation's sushi bars - although December's catch was better. 

Hundreds of Japanese fishermen also protested against the new quotas outside the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in June, while Oma also canceled its annual tuna festival in October in protest.

But Gibbon lamented that Japan and other countries were already lobbying for higher catch quotas for 2019, just one year into the 16-year recovery plan, while also noting reports of Japanese fishermen discarding and not reporting dead bluefin to avoid exceeding their quotas.

The traditional commercial response to declining fish stocks, try to fish harder, the sure path to destroying the fishery.

Wombat-socho has Rule Five Sunday: Good Night, Sweet Princess ready at The Other McCain.