黒マグロ (Kuromaguro)-Bluefin Tuna

I listen to a lot of food podcasts from the States, and one of the big issues that's being batted around the food world is sustainability, especially for fish. Fish farming techniques tend to result in inferior product, and most Japanese food encyclopedias include descriptions and pictures in each entry on how to distinguish the two at the market. Farmed fish are usually fatter and have softer flesh and less flavor than their wild, hard-swimming cousins, and this is especially pronounced in muscular fish like tuna. American sports fishermen used to throw their bluefin tuna catches away until Japan started importing it, but now the worldwide sushi boom has depleted stocks to the point of the bluefin about to become listed as endangered.

One of my spouse's fellow flower-arrangement students comes from a tuna-fishing business and she lent us a DVD that followed the issue to a sushi competition in Britain. The whole program's tone was that of indignation that bluefin was not served there and that the whole issue is an attack by foreign countries on a Japanese way of life.

Interesting points:

1) The whole point of the sustainability argument, i.e. the fact that if bluefin is fished at this rate, it will disappear within a decade. Rather, it was repeatedly stated that this was a direct attack on a Japanese way of life and that the Japanese have a right as citizens of the country that invented tuna to claim priority on world stocks which are being 'stolen' from them by other countries (even if the tuna is imported from said countries).

2) The program's tone was derogatory towards those who avoid eating bluefin because of the conservation issues surrounding the fish, but Japan in general maintains the contradictory feeling of being the victim of the worldwide sushi boom driving down bluefin stocks and causing prices to jump. Shouldn't Japan be happy that people are avoiding consuming something seen as being Japanese for the Japanese?

3) Other types of tuna are not presented as an alternative to bluefin, so most people think that if bluefin becomes unavailable, all tuna is out.

My spouse pointed out that the average Japanese's opinion is shaped mostly by media (like the average citizen in any country) and that the media surrounding bluefin fishing in Japan is mostly likely controlled tightly by the fishing companies and the government officials receiving payout from them. I agree, but it's scary how such a relatively cut-and-dry issue has become so patriotic.

There is a push for Atlantic bluefin exports to be banned. I think this article is a pretty good example of the tone that I'm talking about.

(Note-I'm not blameless on the bluefin issue myself. I eat the scraps of bluefin we get thrown at the restaurant and I eat tuna other places too. But writing this entry may have been the final push for me to make my stand and ask if what I'm getting is bluefin or not and stop putting out cash for a vanishing species.)