Iced Tuna

Word to the wise, always have a bit of doubt in the back of your mind when you read anything in a UK publication. I hate to generalize but generally speaking their sense of journalistic integrity is a bit lacking in addition to leading toward the sensational.

Nonetheless as in jokes and lies, in the UK press there is still probably a grain of truth.

From The Independent (UK)...

Japan's sprawling Mitsubishi conglomerate has cornered a 40 per cent share of the world market in bluefin tuna, one of the world's most endangered fish.

Bluefin tuna frozen at -60C now could be sold in several years' time for astronomical sums if Atlantic bluefin becomes commercially extinct as forecast, a result of the near free-for-all enjoyed by the tuna fleet.

Although the legal bluefin catch is set at 22,000 tonnes, conservationists suspect the actual catch is 60,000 tonnes, four times the maximum that marine scientists recommend. After studying catches and sales, Charles Clover, the environmental journalist behind the film The End of the Line, believes that businesses involved in the ransacking are deep-freezing 20,000 tonnes of bluefin a year for later use.

A bluefin tuna auction at Tsukiji, the über fish market in Tokyo.



By the way, if you see bluefin tuna (maguro, toro, or o-toro) on a sushi menu or anywhere else, do yourself and the world a favor and skip it.