Saving Seafood

Toyosu Market “tuna king” steps back in 2021, with first auctioned fish sold to a new buyer

January 6, 2021 — Japan’s self-proclaimed “tuna king,” Kiyoshi Kimura, is neither the owner of the largest sushi chain in the country, nor its leading purchaser of tuna. He is, however, the one credited with always buying the “biggest and best tuna” available from the first wholesale auction each year at Tokyo’s Toyosu Market. Until this year, that is.

On 5 January, 2021, Kimura – who serves as president of Sushi Zanmai Co., Ltd. – abdicated his title amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, allowing the top tuna to go to Yukitaka Yamaguchi, president of intermediate wholesaler Yamayuki, which supplies many of the top artisanal sushi bars in Tokyo.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fresh COVID restrictions bode ill for tuna wholesalers, but online sales offer hope

December 29, 2020 — Seafood wholesalers at the Toyosu Wholesale Market in Tokyo, Japan, can expect lower restaurant demand at the holidays due to fresh COVID-19 restrictions, but some have teamed up with online marketers to sell high-end items like bluefin tuna and snow crab directly to consumers.

Restaurants and bars were asked on 14 December to close by 10 p.m. by the governors of Tokyo, Osaka, Aichi, Saitama, Kanagawa, and Okinawa prefectures. In Gifu Prefecture, shops that serve alcohol were asked to close at 9 p.m. Most of the closures only apply over the busy New Year holiday period, when many people traditionally visit their hometowns and meet friends and family.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Japanese legislature passes law to ban import of IUU seafood

December 9, 2020 — Japan’s Diet, its national legislature, passed a law on 4 December to ban the importation of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) seafood.

The new law will require records on catches and transfers to be gathered and submitted to the government in order to establish traceability. For imports, a “certificate of legal catch” from a foreign government will be required.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine redfish becoming a popular commodity in Japan

November 11, 2020 — Redfish, specifically of American origin, has become popular in Japan.

Japanese Customs data for 2019 shows imports of 10,780,663 kilograms of the genus Sebastes with a total value of JPY 3.3 billion (USD 31.6 million; EUR 26.6 million). Of this, the U.S. was the leading supplier, responsible for 7,861,104 kilograms valued at JPY 2.1 billion (USD 20.2 million; EUR 17 million).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Could Listening to the Deep Sea help Save it?

November 10, 2020 — You might know what a hydrothermal vent looks like: black plumes billowing from deep-sea pillars encrusted with hobnobbing tubeworms, hairy crabs, pouting fish. But do you know what a hydrothermal vent sounds like?

To the untrained ear, a hydrothermal vent — or more precisely, one vent from the Suiyo Seamount southeast of Japan — generates a viscous, muffled burbling that recalls an ominous pool of magma or a simmering pot of soup.

To the trained ear, the Suiyo vent sounds like many things. When asked during a Zoom call to describe the Suiyo recording more scientifically, Tzu-Hao Lin, a research fellow at the Biodiversity Research Center at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, took a long pause, shrugged, and laughed. People always ask him this, but he never has the answer they want to hear. “I usually tell people to describe it with their own language,” Dr. Lin said. “You don’t need to be an expert to say what it sounds like to you.”

Dr. Lin adores acoustics; in his official academic headshot, he wears a set of headphones. He has listened to the sea since 2008, and to the deep sea since 2018. He has deployed hydrophones, which are microphones designed for underwater use, in waters off Japan to eavesdrop on the noises that lurk thousands of feet below the surface. He published these recordings in August at the a conference of the Deep-Sea Biology Society.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Russia, Japan and US to Design Joint Solutions to Deal with Reduced Salmon Catch This Year

November 6, 2020 — Russia plans to attract the US and Japan to find a solution of the problem of poor salmon catch this year, according to recent statements, made by the head of the Russian Federal Agency for Fisheries (Rosrybolovstvo) Ilya Shestakov.

According to authorities of the Russian Primorsky Krai, this year the volume of salmon caught in the country’s territorial waters is significantly lower than initially expected figures for 2020. A spokesman of the Primorye authorities said if last year 297,000 tonnes of salmon were caught in the Far East, this year the volume of catch is by 1.5 times lower than a year ago. The main reason for this is the rise in water temperature and the massive death of salmon from toxins, released by red algae.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Few foreign companies able to attend Japan International Seafood & Technology Expo due to pandemic

November 4, 2020 — The 22nd Japan International Seafood & Technology Expo took place from 30 September through 2 October at the Tokyo International Exhibition Center (also called “Tokyo Big Sight”).

Amid COVID-19 travel restrictions, the number of exhibitors fell from 835 to 300, and visitors fell from 34,018 to 12,000. The most notable aspect of the show was the small international presence.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Bluefin Tuna in Focus as Japan Seeks Boost to Catch Limits

October 21, 2020 — Countries involved in managing bluefin tuna fisheries are set to face-off over a Japanese proposal to raise its catch quotas for the fish, highly prized for sushi and sashimi.

At an online meeting that began Tuesday, Japan is seeking to raise its catch limits for both smaller and larger bluefin tuna by 20%.

A slight improvement in the spawning population for the fish has raised confidence that it can recover from decades of overfishing. But conservation experts worry that the capture of small fish used for farming bluefin tuna is may be putting the recovery of the species in peril.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission includes more than two dozen countries that collaborate to manage fisheries on the high seas and curb illegal and unauthorized fishing and other activities that endanger highly migratory species such as the Pacific bluefin.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

2020 Tokyo Sustainable Seafood Symposium going virtual in November

October 14, 2020 — This year’s Tokyo Sustainable Seafood Symposium will be held as a virtual event, focusing on the theme of “Sustainable Seafood and the Blue Economy in the New Normal,” organizers Seafood Legacy Co. and Nikkei ESG announced on 7 October.

The 2020 symposium, which is currently open for registration and is free to attend, is the sixth iteration of the event and will take place from 4 to 6 November and 9 to 11 November. English and Japanese channels will be broadcasting the symposium’s seminar content, and attendees from around the world will be able to send in questions and networking requests to speakers through the platform.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

International Panel Omits Pacific Bluefin Tuna Quota Hike Again

October 13, 2020 — An international panel failed to adopt a Japan-proposed plan to increase catch quotas for Pacific bluefin tuna at an online conference on Thursday, in the same outcome as last year’s meeting, Japan’s Fisheries Agency said.

The Northern Committee of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission reached the decision, as the United States argued that tuna stocks continue to be scarce in the Pacific and objected to the proposal. At the committee, approval from all members is required for a proposal to be passed.

Read the full story at Seafood News