The Japanese government, sushi lovers and seafood traders at Tokyo’s massive Tsukiji fish market yesterday cheered the defeat of a proposed ban on trade in endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna.
The proposal for a ban on trade in hauls from the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic was crushed on Thursday by a UN wildlife meeting in a move described by the European Commission as threatening the survival of the ocean predator.
“It was good,” Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said. “It means the import of bluefin tuna will continue for the time being and I think it’s good that the price of bluefin tuna will not rise further.”
However, he said Japan “should be on alert as we still don’t know what will happen” until the end of the meeting in Doha of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) next week.
A smiling Japanese Finance Minister Naoto Kan said he often enjoys negi-toro, minced fatty tuna mixed with leek.
“It’s good that I will be able to keep eating it,” he said.
Environmental group Greenpeace warned the vote “sets the species on a pathway to extinction” although it is unclear exactly how long the worldwide bluefin population has left at current consumption rates.
Three-quarters of all bluefin caught in the world’s oceans is consumed in Japan, mainly raw as sushi and sashimi. A piece of otoro or fatty underbelly now costs ¥2,000 (US$22) at high-end Tokyo restaurants.
Decades of overfishing have seen stocks crash by more than two-thirds in the Mediterranean, from where giant freezer ships have long headed for Japan.
Fish traders and chefs at Tokyo’s Tsukiji market, the world’s biggest, were heartened that they will be able to keep importing the species, which arrives deep-frozen by the hundreds for daily pre-dawn auctions.
“It’s really good that the proposal was voted down. Japanese people love tuna and salmon,” said sushi chef Satoshi Suzuki, as he rolled out tuna for the lunchtime crowd at a restaurant on the edge of the market.
He said he recognized Japan should manage marine resources sustainably, but added that ordinary people do not consume the prized fish in large quantities.
“People don’t eat bluefin tuna every day unless they are rich,” he said.
Japan had fought hard to block the trade ban proposal, arguing that the solution lies with enforcing existing quotas set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
Environmentalists say lax enforcement by ICCAT has already driven Atlantic bluefin tuna close to extinction.
Japanese Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu said Japan would now exercise “leadership” in managing bluefin resources.
Not everyone in Japan was happy with the vote.
“We’re disappointed by the decision,” said Soyo Takahashi, a fisheries expert at the Japan office of Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network which cooperates with the CITES secretariat.
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