THE Kindai University Fisheries Laboratory might not be the most enticing name for a fancy restaurant, but its customers are undeterred. On weekdays they line up in Ginza, a ritzy shopping district in Tokyo, to sample the fish. Diners appear satisfied with the quality of the sashimi, including the juicy slices of bluefin tuna, one of the most prized species of all. But the tuna in the restaurant differs from that available elsewhere in one crucial respect: it was not caught in the wild, but farmed.
Japanese call bluefin tuna “the king of fish”. They eat about 40,000 tonnes of it a year—80% of the global catch. Demand is also growing rapidly elsewhere. Yet Pacific bluefin stocks are down by 97% from their peak in the early 1960s, according to a recent report from the International Scientific Committee, an intergovernmental panel of experts. (Japan disputes its findings.) In some places, fishing is three times the sustainable level, the committee says.
Japan did agree to halve its catch of juvenile bluefin (fish too young to reproduce) in the northern Pacific last year. But it has resisted more stringent measures,...Continue reading
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