Japan is on track for a record low catch of baby eels this year, renewing fears about declining stocks of the endangered fish, a favored summer delicacy for Japanese.
At the end of last month, Japan had 8.8 tonnes of baby Anguilla japonica in culture ponds, including imports from Taiwan, China and South Korea, according to a preliminary tally by the Japanese Fisheries Agency.
That is a plunge from more than 18 tonnes logged in the same period over the past two years.
The tally refers to baby eels caught in Japan, as well as those caught elsewhere in Asia and imported to Japan.
The fish are usually caught in the wild and sold to farmers, who raise them until they are big enough for culinary use.
The fishing season that began in December last year is to end late this month, and Japan’s volume is on track to fall to less than the record-low season-end figure of 12.6 tonnes it hit in 2013.
Eels, known as unagi in Japanese, are a prized summer delicacy and demand for the fish is high across Asia.
In addition to overfishing, experts have said river dams, pollution and the draining of wetlands, as well as oceanic changes and parasites might be playing a role in declining stocks.
The agency strongly rejected the suggestion that overfishing was endangering stocks.
“Annual catches are largely swayed by how ocean currents move... ‘The haul halved’ does not mean the stock resource halved,” agency official Tatsuya Nakaoku told reporters.
Environmentalists have regularly sounded the alarm on the status of A. japonica, with the fish on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “endangered” list.
“We fear further depletion in the stock,” said Hiromi Shiraishi at Traffic, a non-governmental group focused on the trade of wild animals.
“In addition, a bigger problem is that we think the current resource control method cannot respond sufficiently to the decreasing stock,” she told reporters.
She said that the cap on eels in Japanese farming ponds is fixed at 21.7 tonnes, unlike that for tuna, whose quota decreases with signs of stock depletion.
Eels spawn near the Mariana Islands in the Pacific and the babies travel thousands of kilometers toward East Asia in ocean currents.
Their spawning process remains a mystery and efforts to breed them in captivity for commercial purposes have been unsuccessful.
Baby eels are cultivated in ponds. The peak unagi season for Japan is summertime.
Many Japanese believe the eels, served barbecued and basted in a thick sauce of sake, soy sauce and sugar, provide much-needed stamina during the energy-sapping heat and humidity of the summer.
Prices for the dish have been on the rise over the past few years, and this season’s low catch will only push costs up further, Japan Eel Importers Association head Takashi Moriyama said.
Even with imports of adult or cooked eels to boost supply, “prices will rise inevitably,” he told reporters.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was