Maybe There Aren't Plenty More Fish In The Sea

[Mulboyne]

Independent: Overfishing could wipe out bluefin tuna

This has been a catastrophic year for bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean. The enormous fish, which provides the key ingredient for sushi, Japan's unofficial national dish, is being caught in such vast numbers that scientists fear its commercial extinction is looming. Iccat, the International Commission for the Conservation of the Atlantic Tuna...estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 tons were caught. Iccat is meant to police the industry but the WWF believes that it is failing in its duties...The overfishing is due to the explosive growth of hi-tech tuna ranching...schools of tuna are spotted by planes, caught in purse-seine nets by fast fishing fleets, towed ashore, and fattened in nets anchored offshore until big enough to be slaughtered, blast-frozen and shipped to Japan...Mr Guglielmi said: "The Japanese...have such a huge investment in the industry in the Mediterranean, and they are beginning to realise they could lose it all."

Japan Times: Japan imports illegally caught tuna

Japan has imported thousands of tons of bluefin tuna caught by Turkey in the Eastern Atlantic in violation of international agreements, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature...The amount of Turkey's catch in 2004 is unknown, but it is known to have exported more than 3,900 tons to Japan that year.

FG Thread: "Big money stripping"

[Mulboyne]

USAToday: Too few fish in the sea?
Fear of mercury may be what keeps some Americans from eating fish, but the real danger is that people could run out of fish to eat at all, conservation groups say...Numerous popular and once prolific U.S. fish species have been reduced to 1% to 10% of their original populations, according to Oceana, an international ocean protection organization...Bluefin tuna provide the world's most valuable sushi. The Atlantic population has declined by nearly 90% since the 1970s...more...

[Mulboyne]

Kyodo via CrissCross: Southern bluefin tuna catch should be halved in 2007, group recommends

An international commission has recommended the southern bluefin tuna catch be halved in 2007 to prevent the depletion of the species, sources close to the matter said Tuesday. If the tuna are caught at the ongoing pace, there is a 50 percent chance that all fish capable of laying eggs will be gone by 2030, says the report by the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna. The commission comprises Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan. Fishing countries may have little choice but to accept the proposal partly because Australia is pushing hard for a substantial cut in the fish catch, the sources said.

[Mulboyne]

Japan Times: Tuna farms that are feeding Japan seen as a threat to natural stocks

Japan's consumption of sliced raw tuna is undergoing a major upheaval as the surge in supply of farmed tuna brings down prices and threatens to decimate tuna stocks....Many people are critical of Japan's "tuna economy," which they say swallows up great quantities of natural marine resources. It has opened the way for fishermen in other countries to catch young tuna and grow them in seawater ponds until they become big, fatty and ready to be shipped to Japan...more...

[Mulboyne]

It has always been a source of amazement to overseas restauranteurs that the retail price of tuna in Japan has barely shifted. If the true costs of the fish were reflected in the price then it might begin to register in the public consciousness that tuna stocks are well down.

Bloomberg: Tokyo Sushi Shops Forced to Swallow Raw Deal as Tuna Costs Soar

Raw tuna is giving Tateki Suzuki a headache. He is torn between charging more for a serving of tuna sushi and risking a customer exodus from the 28 stand-up restaurants he manages in Tokyo. "Our whole sales concept is 75 yen a piece," says Suzuki, 53. "We have to protect that." Wholesale prices for Japan's favorite fish have surged as much as 84 percent in the past 12 months because of rising fuel costs and shrinking catch quotas. With the nation just emerging from seven years of deflation, retailers haven't been able to pass on the increase to consumers...more...

[Mulboyne]

Independent: Mediterranean bluefin tuna 'close to extinction'

Stocks of tuna in the Mediterranean may be on the point of collapse, the environmentalist group Greenpeace has warned. A month-long voyage of investigation in the bluefin tuna fishing grounds by the Greenpeace vessel Esperanza has found a catastrophic shortage of the giant fish. "The crews of fishing vessels, scientists and our own observations are all now pointing in the same disturbing direction," said François Provost of Greenpeace France. "We spent a week with the French and Spanish fleets around the Balearic islands. They did not catch a single tuna. It is the same story to the north of Egypt. Some fish are being found to the south of Turkey but they are small. A catastrophe is in the making". Greenpeace, the Worldwide Fund for Nature and other pressure groups have been warning for years that intensive demand from Japan could rapidly reduce stocks of Mediterranean bluefin tuna to the same unsustainable levels as their cousins in the Atlantic and the Pacific...Greenpeace also claimed yesterday that it had observed 11 Japanese long-line boats, fishing illegally off Sicily early this month. The Japanese boats have licences to fish in the Mediterranean but the long-line fishery is supposed to be closed in June...more...

[Mulboyne]

SMH: Bluefin tuna scandal - Japan's back door revealed

A BACK DOOR to the Japanese retail fish market has been found by Australian officials investigating the alleged $2 billion southern bluefin tuna catch fraud. Tens of thousands of tonnes of the fish bypassed Japan's auction system to be sold directly to retailers, vastly increasing the real catch, an Australian Government report on the scandal says...The developments followed a revelation by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority's chief executive, Richard McLoughlin, of an "enormous fraud", by Japanese interests, illegally taking $2 billion worth of southern bluefin worldwide over the past 20 years. Mr McLoughlin was speaking after the presentation of results from an independent investigation for the Commission on the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna into an overcatch by Japan. An audio of his speech was removed from the internet after the disclosures...more...

[Big Booger]

When it's gone, it's gone... and they'll be no more southern bluefin tuna for Japanese to catch... Perhaps that would be best... let Japan fish the seas until there is nothing left to catch.

[Taro Toporific]

Love for sushi perils Atlantic bluefin tuna
The Manila Times, Sept 4[floatl][/floatl]
The growing appetite for Japanese sushi threatens to fish Atlantic bluefin tuna out of existence...
....In Paris Philippe Gros, director of fish research at France's Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), conceded that this infatuation with sushi--which has moved way beyond Japan's borders and today is trendy fare in most Western capitals---has led to the market running out of control....
Such high prices have prompted the creation of a massive bluefin ranching industry in the warm waters of the Mediterranean--the natural breeding ground for this species....
So the ranches send out ships to three sites in the Mediterranean where bluefins are known to spawn their young. These young are captured and towed gently, to avoid mortality, in giant cages back to the fish farms...more...

[nullpointer]

[Taro Toporific]

Eat less fish, urges WWF
European extinction warning
TheRegister.co.uk, Wednesday 27th September 2006 08:34 GMT
The WWF has warned European consumers that continuing to tuck into fish captured by "illegal, destructive or wasteful" methods will drive stocks to the brink of extinction.
A WWF report - entitled Fish Dish – exposing the unacceptable face of seafood - examines six popular European dishes, including cod and chips...more...

[Mulboyne]

[Greji]

The Age: Japan forced to halve bluefin catch

Well, Mulboyne, it looks like you are going to have to stay in London to get your sushi from here out!

[Mulboyne]

BBC: 'Only 50 years left' for sea fish

There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study. Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Writing in the journal Science, the international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity...more...

[Taro Toporific]

The Age: Japan forced to halve bluefin catch
JAPAN has buckled under Australian pressure, accepting a severe cut in its southern bluefin tuna catch after officials accused it of illegally taking fish worth up to $8 billion over the past 20 years....

[floatl][/floatl]Mediterranean tuna conservation to hit Japan's sushi-lovers
Mon Nov 27, 1:21 AM ET
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan expects a crunch in tuna imports, driving up prices of favorite dishes such as sushi and sashimi, after a decision to slash the catch of Mediterranean bluefin tuna, officials have said.
A 42-nation meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia agreed Sunday to cut the catch of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean Sea, as environmentalists warned that a growing global fad for Japanese food was driving tuna toward extinction...more....

[IkemenTommy]

Japan's excessive fishing of southern tuna detailed

An internal report by a multilateral tuna conservation body says that about 100,000 tons of southern Bluefin tuna are estimated to have been caught above quotas and sold in Japan between 1996 and 2005, sources said Sunday.

[Mulboyne]

BusinessWeek: Japan summit aims to save tuna stocks

Nothing highlights Japan's insatiable hunger for tuna like the fish aisle at a supermarket -- brick-size chucks of savory red meat, trays of delicately sliced sashimi and shelf-loads of sushi rolls. Prized bluefin specimens the size of grown men, hooked as far away as the Mediterranean, are packed in ice and flown for next-day delivery to Tokyo, where they can fetch hundreds of dollars per pound at auction. With soaring demand and prices to match, it's a small wonder that global tuna stocks are on the verge of collapse. The new question is how long -- or if -- the binge can continue. This week scientists, regulators and fishermen are trying to reverse the decline at an unprecedented global summit to save the silvery fish and one of the world's most valuable and endangered catches...more...

[Mulboyne]

Independent: Japan signs up to last-ditch plan to halt decimation of tuna stocks

It is prized the world over, particularly in Japan, but the world's oceans are running out of tuna. Yesterday, in the Japanese city of Kobe, the first international plan was adopted to stop overfishing and arrest the dramatic decline in stocks. Delegates from 60 countries agreed to take steps to stamp out poaching, control the growth of fishing fleets and police quotas more efficiently. The plan also committed the five regulatory bodies representing different regions to strengthen co-ordination and co-operation. "Maybe the steps we made this week seem small, but this is a big step, a historical step," said the chair of the meeting, Masanori Miyahara, of Japan's Fisheries Agency. The meeting was initiated by Japan, which is under pressure because it consumes one-quarter of the supply of the main species: bluefin, southern bluefin, bigeye, yellowfin and albacore.

Delegates in Kobe recognised the "critical need" to halt the decline in stocks and rebuild them to sustainable levels. Specific measures agreed to included the issuing of certificates of origin to help prevent illegal fishing, sharing data on stock assessments, and ensuring greater transparency in setting quotas. Conservation groups were unimpressed with the plan, saying that it did not go far enough. WWF International, which has warned that Atlantic bluefin stocks are at a dangerously low level, said: "Their only agreement was to gather more data and talk more often"...more...

[Taro Toporific]

Independent: Japan signs up to last-ditch plan to halt decimation of tuna stocks

While talking with my favorite mama-san at the 150yen cup sake at the "stand-bar" window hanging on the side of a local sake-ya, I heard this bit of Japanese common-knowledge: "Ware-ware ...those tuna fishing quotas are America's plot to force us to eat mad-cow...."

[Captain Japan]

If You Knew Sushi
Vanity Fair

In search of the ultimate sushi experience, the author plunges into the frenzy of the world's biggest seafood market―Tokyo's Tsukiji, where a bluefin tuna can fetch more than $170,000 at auction―and discovers the artistry between ocean and plate, as well as some fishy surprises.

It looks like a samurai sword, and it's almost as long as he is tall. His hands are on the hilt. He raises and steadies the blade.

Two apprentices help to guide it. Twelve years ago, when it was new, this knife was much longer, but the apprentices' daily hours of tending to it, of sharpening and polishing it, have reduced it greatly.

It was made by the house of Masahisa, sword-makers for centuries to the samurai of the Minamoto, the founders of the first shogunate. In the 1870s, when the power of the shoguns was broken and the swords of the samurai were outlawed, Masahisa began making these things, longer and more deadly than the samurai swords of old....more...

[Mulboyne]

The Age: Japanese tuna scandal starts to bite

THE multibillion-dollar Japanese southern bluefin tuna scandal is worsening under closer Australian Government scrutiny. An official investigation has already found that over 20 years Japanese fishers hid an $8 billion overcatch of the highly prized sashimi fish that migrates around southern Australia. But an international meeting has been told the scale of the overcatch is climbing, Japan's figures still do not add up, and Tokyo is stonewalling attempts to regulate fishing of the critically endangered species. An international investigation into what Australian officials called an outrageous fraud found that Japanese fishers probably used a series of disguises for the overcatch...In a review that the Japanese Government has vetoed from public release, the investigators found the fraud extended to consumer markets...But despite continuing concerns about the extent of the catch in the past, a spokesman for federal Fisheries Minister Eric Abetz said Japan appeared to be fishing legally now...more...

[Greji]

The Age: Japanese tuna scandal starts to bite

Can"t be true! There are more than enough tuna around. Just go to any sushiya, they all got plenty!

[kurohinge1]

The Age: Japanese tuna scandal starts to bite . . .

In a review that the Japanese Government has vetoed from public release, the investigators found the fraud extended to consumer markets.

"The investigation shows there were illegal or inappropriate labelling and trading that led buyers to believe imported tuna (was) domestic tuna, and farmed tuna (was) wild tuna at least at the retail and wholesale level in Japan," said the report, obtained by The Age . . .

Deja vu - Nippon Shokuhin mislabeled beef, abused gov't scheme

Nippon Shokuhin Co., a Fukuoka-based meat processor, falsely labeled imported beef as domestic and swindled an industry body of some 136 million yen under a government-run beef-buyback program devised after the outbreak of mad cow disease last year . . .

. . . The Australian delegation told the the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna it was concerned at large discrepancies between the amount of the fish available on the Japanese market and the officially claimed catch, according to the meeting's report released yesterday . . .

Or maybe, you're not eating fish . . .

. . . Wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC said with southern bluefin stock down to less than 10 per cent of the virgin stock, inaction was driving the species nearer to extinction. . .

I don't really want to think about whether the fish I'm eating was promiscuous or not.

[Greji]

[quote="kurohinge1"]Quote:
Originally Posted by The Age

. . . Wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC said with southern bluefin stock down to less than 10 per cent of the virgin stock, inaction was driving the species nearer to extinction. . .

I don't really want to think about whether the fish I'm eating was promiscuous or not.]

Ah come on Kuro! You wouldn't want to eat just any old hooker would you?

[Mulboyne]

Washington Post: Japan's Sacred Bluefin, Loved Too Much

"Tuna cannot look like skinny Japanese women." So says Tsunenori Iida, and he ought to know. His family has been buying and selling tuna for seven generations here at the world's largest fish market. Six mornings a week for 43 years, Iida has been casting his eyes and running his fingers over the torpedo-shaped carcasses of bluefin tuna, the most precious fish in the sea..."I look for beauty and balanced plumpness," Iida said. "I am looking for a Catherine Zeta-Jones type of tuna." Alas for Japan, which wolfs down a quarter of the global tuna catch, and for the rest of the world: An increasingly voracious appetite for sushi is driving the supply of plump pulchritude served raw perilously low...more...

[kurohinge1]

[SIZE="4"]Japanese tuna fishermen halt operations to boost stock[/SIZE]

TOKYO (AFP) —]stocks that are rapidly declining under pressure from a worldwide sushi craze, officials said[/B].

Tuna vessels from Japan's largest fisheries cooperative are taking part in the suspension.

Some 230 longline vessels, accounting for 60 percent of such ships in Japan, will stay ashore for a total of two months spaced out across the next two years, an official at the cooperative said.

The suspension is expected to cut by five percent the catch of tuna on Japanese vessels, a cooperative official said.

"The main reason of our suspension is sluggish fishing offshore," the cooperative said in its website.

The move is part of coordinated efforts with fishermen in China, Taiwan and South Korea to recover tuna stock, it said.

Tuna stocks across the world have fallen dramatically in recent years as more people around the world take a liking to sushi and sashimi, reputed to be healthy.

The European Commission in June closed early the industrial bluefin tuna fishing season in the Mediterranean over fears that quotas were being filled too quickly.

. . . In response, the government on Tuesday announced an emergency 690-million-dollar package to help the country's fishermen.

The message seems to have finally sunk in - but will it be too little, too late?

And they've put their own spin on the depleted stocks, with no mention of their own illegal over-fishing but, instead, anonymous officials blaming foreigners for eating more sushi.

See also: Greenpeace Now After Tuna Fishers

[Behan]

Blaming foreigners for overfishing tuna smells a bit fishy.

[Mulboyne]

Abstract from a Mainichi article:

...So what lies ahead for the tuna fishing industry? To get an answer to this question, I visited Kenji Saito, 61, who once spent six years on an oceangoing tuna boat, and now runs Kashikiya, a tuna cuisine restaurant in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture. His book on tuna fishing, "Maguro Tosabune," won the Shogakukan Nonfiction Award. I showed up at Saito's restaurant after he had finished his prep work, and he had a stern look on his face. "Soaring oil prices are the biggest problem for oceangoing tuna fishermen, coming just at the time that things were looking up as they were aiming to restore the resource with catch limits and reductions in the fleet. At this rate, they will be forced to abandon the industry," warns Saito. Even if oil prices head downward, he predicts that conditions will continue to be bleak. When Saito fished for tuna nearly 30 years ago, oceangoing tuna boats were thriving. They were hauling in so much tuna -- from off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, from everywhere -- that it was a lark. Boat owners and fishermen were all smiles. But then foreign boats joined the fishing, and as they continued to fish, the resource began to decline before their eyes. And parallel to these developments, the trading companies began to buy up tuna by the boatload, driving down prices.

"In those days, you had to catch one million yen a day (of tuna) to break even. But today the price of tuna has fallen by half. Boat owners have tried to cut costs by hiring foreign crews, and have been able to reduce their break-even point to 600,000 yen per day. But soaring oil prices have added another 300,000 yen to their daily costs," he says. "In the past, tuna were fat, and their stomachs were filled with small fish and squid. Today, they are skinny and their stomachs are empty, probably because foreign purse-seine fishing boats have exhausted the supplies of the fish that they feed on. If we fail to place restrictions on both Japan's long-line boats and the purse-seine fleets, the oceans will be depleted." Saito believes that "now is the time for both the upstream (the fishing industry) and the downstream (consumers) to come together. Japanese boats believe that they have the world's best technology that enables them to catch tuna without harming the fish. But if the entire burden is placed on the fishing industry, the lights on Japan's oceangoing tuna fishing boats will go out some day. The only solution is for consumers to accept a certain level of price increases, and for the government to provide generous compensation to the fishing industry."

Saito is a true believer in offering his customers natural tuna caught on long lines. "The toro boom notwithstanding, I don't use farm-raised tuna whose fat content has been enhanced," he says. But Saito has heard that local fish markets will run out of stocks of frozen natural tuna by the end of the year. "What I can do is convey the toils of the fishermen and the tastiness of the red meat of the natural tuna (to my customers). There are various ways of preparing tuna. It is good for you, and nothing has to be thrown away. There is no fish more wonderful than the tuna," says Saito. As the sun went down, I found myself sitting across the counter from Saito. As I bit into each dish -- sashimi, spareribs made from jaw meat, skin steeped in ponzu sauce --Saito's words came to take on a deep meaning. "For Japanese, tuna is the grand champion of fish cuisine. We must leave some for the next generation without eating all of it," he says.

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: ICCAT calls for halving of bluefin tuna catches

The scientific committee of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas has compiled a report calling for a reduction of at least 50 percent of the total allowable catch of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic from 2009, it has been learned. ICCAT, an intergovernmental fishery organization controlling tuna stocks in the Atlantic, likely will review the catch quotas based on the report at its annual meeting to be held in Morocco on Nov. 17-24. This likely development will almost inevitably lead to the tightening of regulations and a surge in tuna prices. According to the report, 61,000 tons of tuna, including illegal catches, are estimated to have been caught in 2007. Reported catches in 2007 came to 32,398 tons, although the total catch quota was 29,500 tons. The committee pointed out that the risk of the tuna stock collapsing was becoming severe and demanded the reduction of annual catch quotas to 15,000 tons or less and to maintain these for more than 10 years to ensure sustainable catches of bluefin tuna.

In Japan, 44,000 tons of bluefin tuna were consumed in 2006. About 60 percent of this total came from the Mediterranean and the Eastern Atlantic, either caught by Japanese fishing boats or imported. The wholesale price of frozen bluefin tuna at the Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, known as Tsukiji Market, has been on the rise since catch quotas were set at ICCAT's annual meeting in November 2006. A total of 46 nations, territories and intergovernmental bodies, including Japan, the European Union and the United States, are members of ICCAT.

[gkanai]

Is it possible to farm-raise tuna? I was under the impression that doing so was impossible.