Saving Seafood

Tuna goes for $200,000 at Tokyo market’s New Year auction

January 5, 2021 — A bluefin tuna sold for 20.8 million yen ($202,197) in the first auction of the new year at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market on Tuesday when it reopened after the holiday break.

This was sharply down from the 193 million yen the highest-selling tuna fetched at last year’s first Toyosu auction.

One major bidder, Kiyomura Corp, said they had refrained from bidding high this year out of fear that a large number of customers would be inspired to flock to their restaurants since high bids for high quality tuna usually attract media attention.

The government has said eating and drinking out is one of the major causes of coronavirus infections.

Selling prices in the first tuna auction fluctuate widely from year to year in Japan, with a record 333.6 million yen paid in 2019.

Read the full story at Reuters

NOAA Fisheries Closes Office in U.S. Embassy Tokyo After 33 years

August 4, 2020 — NOAA Fisheries closed the representative office in the U.S. Embassy Tokyo on July 31 after 33 years due to a sharp budget cut of Silver Spring, according to the leaving official’s announcement in Tokyo.

NOAA Fisheries opened its office in 1987 in the Commercial Service of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo after establishing the U.S. EEZ and phasing out of international fleets. The mission of NOAA Tokyo was to develop the Japanese market for U.S. fishery products, such as Alaskan salmon and bottom fish. At that time Japan was the largest market for U.S. seafood, and the NOAA Tokyo office assisted many American small exporters of American lobster and sea urchin, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s triumphant entry into the market. It supported the Tokyo offices of American Seafood Company, Ocean Beauty Seafoods, and Trident Seafoods. It assisted seafood trade missions to Japan from U.S. states and native Americans. It negotiated with the Japanese government to permit the import of live oysters from Washington, Oregon, New York, and Connecticut.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Toyosu sales figures reveal crippling effect of COVID-19 on Japan’s seafood market

May 4, 2020 — Tokyo’s Toyosu Market is experiencing a drastic financial fallout as Japan reels from the economic shock of COVID-19.

From March to April, both the volume of seafood Japan’s largest seafood market handled and the prices it received had nosedived. But the crash has been uneven, reflecting a shift by Japanese consumers from eating out to cooking at home. Sales of luxury items like tuna have dropped significantly, while sales of fish more commonly cooked inside the home in Japan, such as salmon and hamachi, have not seen a significant falloff.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Japan Resumes Commercial Whaling. But Is There an Appetite for It?

June 1, 2019 — Japan resumed commercial whale hunting on Monday after a hiatus of more than 30 years, defying calls from conservation groups to protect animals once hunted to the brink of extinction.

Now whalers, who have long depended on government subsidies for their survival, face the much tougher challenge of defying basic economic reality: The market for their product is declining while labor costs across the nation are on the rise.

Japanese production of whale meat peaked in 1962, and the taste is generally preferred by an older generation. The government also hopes to start reducing the $46 million in annual subsidies it pays to whale hunters within three years. The value of previous catches, obtained under the auspices of scientific research in the Antarctic, totaled only about a half to a third of that.

“Will whaling succeed commercially?” said Masayuki Komatsu, a former government official who oversaw Japan’s international negotiations on the subject and now works at a think tank in Tokyo. “No way.”

Read the full story at The New York Times

Pacific fisheries commision targets centralized vessel monitoring at latest meet

June 28, 2019 — The upcoming meeting of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) in Tokyo from July 16-18 will discuss the centralization of vessel monitoring in the region, a statement from the organization said.

The environmental NGO Pew Charitable Trusts, which is set to attend the fifth annual meeting of the NPFC, has proposed the use of modern technology to combat illegal fishing as a key part of the meeting’s docket.

This includes the use of a centralized vessel monitoring system, a formal compliance monitoring scheme, and the requirement that all vessels fishing in the area must display the flag of a member nation.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike reneges on Tsukiji promises

March 6, 2019 — Without apology or explanation – or even acknowledgement – Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has reversed her promise to redevelop the city’s famed Tsukiji fish market as a food-related theme park. She now backs a plan to build an international conference and exhibition hall complex at the site, which will include a luxury hotel, waterfront open space, restaurants, and docks.

Critics are demanding Koike explain her reversal to the former tenants, who were promised the right to move back into the old market if they wished. Newspaper editorials and television commentators have lambasted Koike’s action and her refusal to admit she changed her mind on the decision.

Vendors strongly opposed the high-profile closure of Tsukiji and their forced move to the new Toyosu marketing in October 2018. In addition to concerns over polluted soil at the new site, there was strong opposition from many who wanted to preserve the tradition and living history of the old site.

Just before the Tokyo governmental election, on 20 June, 2017, in order to gain acceptance from market tenants and resolve the thorny issue, Koike championed the phrase, “Protect Tsukiji, utilize Toyosu!”

“I promise to help businesses when they decide to return to Tsukiji,” Koike said at the time.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

The World Biggest Fish Market Tsukiji Moved To Toyosu. How Is The New Market Doing?

February 26, 2019 — If you are a sushi lover, most likely you have eaten fish from the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. It would not be an overstatement that Tsukiji served as the foundation of the current global popularity of sushi.

The 23-hectare Tsukiji opened in 1935, and became the space for over a thousand vendors dealing with the freshest seafood from all over the world. In 2015, the market traded around 1,700 tons of seafood, and the sales amounted to $14 million a day, although the figures are declining lately due to competition with other routes of seafood distribution.

Because Tukiji was built to accommodate the railroad-based transportation system, the facilities became outdated for the modern truck-based system. As a result, relocation of the market became an agenda in 1960s. After multiple discussions and postponements over the past years, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) finally declared the move to the new location in Toyosu, which is less than two miles away from Tsukiji, in 2001.

Read the full story at Forbes

Japan’s ‘King of Tuna’ Pays Record $3 Million for Bluefin at New Tokyo Fish Market

January 7, 2018 — The first tuna auction of the year at Tokyo’s new fish market set a high bar on Saturday after a restaurant chain paid a record price — more than $3 million — for a giant bluefin tuna.

The city’s famed Tsukiji fish market was relocated to the new space, in the Toyosu neighborhood, late last year to make way for the 2020 Olympics. The market was well known for its pre-dawn tuna auctions, a tradition that is continuing at the new location.

On Saturday, dozens of buyers walked along row after row of giant tuna, examining the fish before making their bids. The $5.3 billion enclosed, air-conditioned facility at Toyosu is a far cry from the grime and grit of Tsukiji, which served as the city’s main fish market for 83 years.

Read the full story at The New York Times

E-commerce making Tokyo’s famed fish markets obsolete

June 14, 2017 — By the time Tokyo’s new auction site is up and running, it may be time to question if it is needed at all.

Even as the Tokyo government wrangles with the issue of moving the Tsukiji wholesale market to a new – and possibly polluted – location, innovative companies are forming more direct purchasing and marketing channels that bypass Tokyo’s central market.

Despite a strong tradition of Japanese consumers buying fish from markets in person, Japanese seafood sellers are taking advantage of the internet to match buyer and seller, use air links and refrigerated parcel delivery services, and, by cutting out the layers of middlemen, return a larger share of the consumer price to fishermen.

A seafood trading website called SCSS debuted in 2009 as a collaboration between Osaka-based Syunzai Ltd., a seafood dealer that also operates food sales websites, and Tokyo-based Mitsuiwa Corp., an IT development company. Delivery is arranged using the airline ANA and nationwide refrigerated and frozen parcel delivery is provided by Yamato Transport Co., Ltd.

The service connects buyers directly to about 1,500 fishing cooperatives and local brokers at ports, who are the sellers. The approximately 100 registered purchasers are retailers, foodservice distributors and brokers. SCSS operates as a trading platform, rather than actually taking ownership of the product.

The company makes its money from membership fees – it costs about JPY 100,000 (USD 898, EUR 804) to join, plus JPY 10,500 (USD 94, EUR 84) monthly, and from a two percent commission from sellers and an 11.5 percent from buyers. The most popular use of the site is in finding a home for non-target small-quantity bycatch for which the seller may have no sales channel.

Fishermen take digital photos or movies of the actual fish as they are landed and post them to the site. Buyers can view and bid on these in real-time. There are designated pickup locations for the parcel service at ports around Japan. The product arrives fresher than that which goes through the auction channel. As the sales are recorded electronically, traceability is ensured. The site processes payments, so buyers make a single payment to the site operator, even when they deal with multiple sellers.

Another service in a similar vein is Chihou Sousei Network Co. (CSN), headed by Ryohei Nomoto. The company air-freights freshly caught fish from across Japan to its processing facility on the grounds of Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, and distributes the produce either within Tokyo or again by air. About 40 percent of the product is sent overseas.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Bluefin Tuna Sells for $632,000 at Tsukiji’s New Year Auction

January 5, 2016 — TOKYO — A sushi chain boss paid $632,000 for a 466-pound bluefin tuna at auction on Thursday.

The 74.2 million yen winning bid for the prized but imperiled species was the second highest ever after a record 155.4 million yen bid in 2013 at the annual New Year auction at the famed Tsukiji market.

Kiyomura Corp. owner Kiyoshi Kimura posed, beaming, with the gleaming, man-sized fish, which was caught off the coast of northern Japan’s Aomori prefecture.

His company, which runs the Sushi Zanmai chain, often wins the auction. This year’s purchase works out to $1,356 per pound.

Japanese are the biggest consumers of the torpedo-shaped bluefin tuna, and surging consumption of sushi has boosted demand, as experts warn the species could go extinct.

A report by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the North Pacific Ocean last year put the population of bluefin tuna at 2.6 percent of its “unfished” size, down from an earlier assessment of 4.2 percent.

Read the full story at NBC News