Bluefin Tuna is in Serious Touble and Tuna Quota Cut

By Qinyan Huang


    
       The U.S.'s announcement that it will support an international trade ban on the Atlantic bluefin tuna was shocking news for Japan, given that about half of their supply comes from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Reuters reported. While Japan says it won't comply with an international ban on the fish, fish farmers are looking to alternative methods. Farmed tuna is increasingly emerging as a commercially viable option, which scientists are breeding using eggs hatched in labs, not in the wild, Reuters reported.

       Atlantic bluefin tuna is in serious trouble as demand for bluefin as a sushi topping drives down stocks of the fish. Conservation organizations and celebrities have pressured high-profile restaurateurs, particularly the global sushi tycoon Nobu Matsuhisa, to remove bluefin from their menus. But so far it looks like a losing battle. Bluefin sushi is big money, and that's because everyone thinks bluefin toro--the fatty belly cuts of the fish--is the pinnacle of fine Japanese dining. If this situation weren't so sad, it would be hilarious, because just a few decades ago, the Japanese considered toro such a disgusting part of the tuna that the only people who would eat it were impoverished manual laborers. And prior to about the 1920s, no self-respecting Japanese person would eat any kind of tuna at all if they could possibly avoid it. Tuna was so despised in Japan that all tuna species qualified for an official term of disparagement: gezakana, or "inferior fish."

      But the current bluefin fad--Atlantic bluefin in particular--remains a historical anomaly, and one partly manufactured deliberately, for corporate profit. During the heyday of Japan's export economy, Japanese airline cargo executives promoted Atlantic bluefin for sushi so they'd have something to fill their planes up with on the flight from East Coast US cities back to Tokyo. And as the recent documentary film The End of the Line has reported, Mitsubishi Corporation, one of the largest bluefin distributors in the world, now appears to be stockpiling massive amounts of bluefin in enormous high-tech deep freezers so it can make a killing dolling them at inflated prices out after the wild fish is all but gone.


      As this mayhem continues to unfold, back in Japan you can still find a few old-school sushi aficionados who disdain bluefin toro. They'll tell you that toro is child's play. Anyone can enjoy that simplistic, melt-in-your-mouth succulence, they say. It takes the real skill of a connoisseur to appreciate the more subtle and complex tastes and textures of the traditional kings of the sushi bar--delicate whitefish like flounder and sea bream being some of the best, along with mackerels, jacks, clams, squid, and other types of shellfish that have been popular all along. Personally, I won't eat bluefin anymore, and I don't miss it at all. My sushi eating experiences have actually become more interesting as a result.