Saving Seafood

Iran seeks revival of caviar industry in post-sanctions era

November 13, 2015 — GOLDASHT, Iran (AP) ” On the shores of the Caspian Sea, an ambitious project is underway to produce a pricey delicacy that could boost Iran’s economy as sanctions ease: caviar.

Iran, once the world’s biggest exporter of the luxury food, sold over 40 tons of sturgeon eggs in 2000. Exports plunged to just 1 ton last year due to dwindling fish stocks and economic sanctions imposed by world powers in response to Iran’s nuclear program.

After Tehran struck a landmark deal this summer to curb its nuclear ambitions in exchange for lifting sanctions ” including those on caviar ” some in Iran are now counting on a revival in exports of the exclusive eggs.

“We hope that as a result of the Iranian government’s interaction with the world, the path will be opened for us to export our products abroad and bring in foreign currency earnings. It does not make a difference where we export to, the United States or Europe,” said Ishaq Islami, manager of the private Ghareh Boron Caviar Fish Farm in the coastal village of Goldasht.

The farm and two nearby facilities are breeding half a million sturgeon fingerlings a year, filling its pools with water pumped in from the Caspian Sea.

Islami began the $100 million project in 2005 but it takes at least 12 years for sturgeon to mature and produce caviar. About 110,000 are beluga species that produce prized silver-gray eggs, the world’s most expensive caviar.

The fish farm aims to export 30 tons of salt-cured caviar and 2,000 tons of sturgeon meat in three years. Islami expects to earn $90 million a year based on an average price of $3,000 a kilogram (about $1,360 a pound) for caviar. The United States, Europe and Japan have traditionally been Iran’s biggest export markets.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

In Tokyo, Tsukiji Fish Market Braces for an Uncertain Future

November 13, 2015 — Tokyo is known for its neon lights and armies of salarymen who spill out of office towers in often indistinct neighborhoods.

But amid that giant urban crush is Tsukiji fish market, the world’s largest. In a city in a rush to wipe away its history, the market is a gem that evokes Japan’s pre-World War II past and its love of food.

The wholesale market on the banks of the Sumida River several minutes from Ginza opened in 1935 and is best known for its predawn tuna auction. But navigating the market’s cramped and slippery corridors can be treacherous and, while fascinating, is primarily for viewing, not sampling.

The retail market next door is more inviting. Roughly eight square blocks, the outer market, or Jogai (pronounced JOE-guy), is chockablock with small, family-owned retail shops selling fish and meat, seaweed and sweets, knickknacks and kitchen supplies. Shopkeepers with raspy voices invite passers-by to look at their goods or eat in their restaurants, some of which are tucked away in alleys. In my dozen years working in Tokyo, including several at The New York Times bureau across the street, and on my annual visits since then, my wife and I have never grown tired of wandering the market’s mazelike streets. We stock up on dried seaweed, Japanese snacks and other sundries, and dine at surprisingly affordable restaurants. We love the shopkeepers and their gravely voices, quick wit and candid opinions.

Yet this gustatory wonderland is in danger. Next year, the Tokyo government will move the wholesale market a few miles away to Toyosu. There, mammoth fishing ships will dock next to the market, speeding delivery of tons of fish. A road that the city is building will pass through where the wholesale market is now, to connect the Olympic Village for the 2020 Tokyo Games with the main sporting venues about 10 miles away. When the wholesale market vanishes, Tsukiji will lose some of its working-class feel and potentially some of the merchants who now cater to the market’s many workers, something that makes some people in Jogai anxious. The topic is never far from their minds, and on recent trips to Tokyo, we have spoken with shopkeepers to get a sense of what lies ahead for our favorite haunt.

Read the full story at The New York Times

 

Pacific bluefin tuna group puts off new moves to save fish

September 3, 2015 — An international body that monitors fisheries in most of the Pacific Ocean ended a meeting in Japan on Thursday without agreement on fresh measures to protect the dwindling bluefin tuna.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission was unable to get a consensus on either short-term or long-term measures to help restore the bluefin population, whose numbers are estimated to have fallen 96 percent from unfished levels.

Last year, the 10-nation commission recommended that the catch of juvenile tuna be cut to half of its average level in 2002-2004. But conservation groups say more must be done to counter the sharp decline of the species.

The lack of a required three-quarters quorum prevented any agreement, since representatives from China, the Cook Islands, Vanuatu and the Philippines did not attend. So any decisions on new long-term measures were pushed back to 2016, the Japanese Fisheries Agency said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Powerful typhoon kills 11,000 farmed tuna in Japan: reports

Tokyo, Japan (AFP) — July 24, 2015 — A powerful typhoon which lashed Japan last week has killed more than 11,000 farmed bluefin tuna, costing over $10 million in damage, local media said Saturday.

Typhoon Nangka made landfall in southwestern Japan on the night of July 16 and slowly moved northward before turning into a tropical depression.

Torrential rain and gusts of wind wreaked havoc in various parts of western Japan, also causing high waves and clouding sea water in the fish farm near the Pacific coastal town of Kushimoto, Kyodo News and the Asahi newspaper reported.

Read the full story from the Agence France-Presse at Business Insider

Challenges in Japanese Eel Production

July 16, 2015 — Today the Japanese consume around 100,000 tons, or 70 – 80 per cent of the worldwide eel catch, but in 2013 the Japanese Ministry of the Environment designated the fish as a species at risk of extinction, and in June 2014 it was placed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List of Threatened Species.

In Japan, aquaculture is extremely important to the eel industry’s success, with most eel caught in the wild as juveniles and then raised on fish farms. However, the overfishing of juvenile glass eels has now become a huge problem.

Fed on a diet of fishmeal and kept in fossil-fuel-heated greenhouses, eel are usually collected along the Pacific Coast between December and April and put into tanks where their chances of survival are improved thanks to heating apparatus that helps increase water temperature particularly during the winter, and a circulating filter system in which water is filtered and re-circulated.

Ponds or specialized tanks are then used to grow the eels in temperatures of around 23oC – 28oC, after which regular grading takes place in which the eels are separated according to size and harvested once they are large enough to have reached market value.

Read the full story at The Fish Site 

 

Japanese fisherman preparing to reunite with his boat in B.C., four years after tsunami

July 3, 2015 — After the earthquake, a 23-metre-high tsunami ripped through the Japanese port town of Ofunato, destroying houses, tumbling cars like toy blocks and capsizing ships in the harbour. Stacks of freight containers were swept off the docks and sent hurtling through the town. People fled up the steep streets around the harbour, and the air was filled with the terrifying screeches of buildings being torn apart.

This was how the great earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, arrived in Ofunato, a town of 41,000 that, through the miraculous journey of one small boat, has become linked to the tiny fishing village of Klemtu, population 450, on British Columbia’s Central Coast.

When the wave of water that rose along coastal Japan that day swept back out to sea, it left more than 15,000 people dead and took almost five million tonnes of debris with it. Lost were about 1,000 vessels, including many of the boats in Ofunato harbour. Most of the debris soon sank, but an estimated 1.4 million tonnes drifted offshore.

Four years later, fragments of the communities shattered in Japan continue to reach North America’s West Coast, raising pollution concerns but also serving as touching reminders of what was lost. Everything from small plastic toy soldiers that washed up on beaches to a 50-metre fishing boat that eventually sank in the Gulf of Alaska has made the crossing. Most of the debris can’t be traced, but occasionally serial numbers allow a connection to be made.

Read the full story at The Globe and Mail