It comes from the deep sea, it's known as the King of Sashimi, it's one of the most expensive ingredients in the world, it's the bluefin tuna! Under normal circumstances, it is not used to eat, but to be auctioned, Japan has played the most slippery, has become a food culture, to say that the price to sell to be worthy of this culture, a fish worth 21 million yuan is not enough? It was this 600-pound bluefin tuna that was auctioned for 330 million yen in January 2019, and it was definitely more than enough to change a house. In other years, depending on the size of the fish, millions or even tens of millions of prices abound, and in general, the larger the fish, the more valuable it is.
There are three main types of larger bluefin tuna: Pacific bluefin tuna, Atlantic bluefin tuna and southern bluefin tuna, of which the Atlantic bluefin tuna is the largest, with a body length of 4.3 meters and a weight of more than 800 kilograms, and the smallest is the southern bluefin tuna, which is 2.5 meters long and weighs 260 kg. They resemble a streamline, have a strong and powerful tail, swim at a speed of 60 to 80 kilometers per hour, are extremely endurance, and can swim 150 kilometers in a day.
Why swim so fast and so far? Because from the moment they are born, they must keep swimming, otherwise they will drown in the water. Tuna does not use the gill cap to control the amount of water like other fish, through the protein filament to integrate the oxygen in the water into the blood, but by swimming quickly, forced to rush the ventilation to obtain oxygen in the water, but also to eat a large number of small fish to maintain physical fitness.
It is also for this reason that they have a very high content of hemoglobin and myoglobin in their blood, with an average lipid content of up to 15-20%, and they taste fat and fat, so they become the top sashimi. But in the beginning, bluefin tuna was not popular because it decayed quickly after coming out of the water, so in the 1960s, many North Americans let go of it after catching it, and even cats didn't want to eat them, so the price was very low.
At that time, Japan's electronic products were widely exported to North America, and many times the aircraft transported were returned empty, and some merchants saw this business opportunity to transport cheap bluefin tuna from North America back to Japan for sale, killing two birds with one stone, and because of this, tuna entered the public eye, although bluefin tuna began to be eaten as early as the Meiji Restoration. After the blessing of freezing technology, nearly 80% of bluefin tuna have been imported into the Japanese market, but with the increase in demand, the price of bluefin tuna has also risen, from 1234 US dollars per kilogram in 2011 to 10791 US dollars per kilogram in 2019, "gold in the water" is worthy of the name, but the number of wilds has dropped sharply.
In fact, in the Mediterranean Sea a thousand years ago, fishermen along the coast caught schools of bluefin tuna that migrated and spawned in the spring and summer of each year, and by the middle of the 19th century, the annual catch of bluefin tuna was still as high as tens of thousands of tons, but the size of the all-you-can-eat fishing method made the resources decline. For example, in the 50s and 70s of the last century, the port of Saint-Jean-de-Luz in France could provide 60 tons of bluefin tuna per day in the summer, and now the yellowfin tuna is included, and the supply of half a month is only more than 30 tons.
In fact, people have long been aware of the decline of bluefin tuna, Canadian fishermen began to try to farm bluefin tuna in 1970, but bluefin tuna only eat live bait, so the cost of breeding is very high, and the meat production rate is low, even in the modern era of advanced technology, every 1 kg of bluefin tuna meat also needs to consume 15 kg of chilled fish, and about 30 million tons of small trash fish are caught every year to breed these high-end market fish. And these tuna, which have been raised for two or three years, have not lived past childhood and have been sent to the table, and more importantly, countries such as Australia, South Korea, Spain and other countries have adopted a traditional "semi-artificial farming" approach, and the fry are all from wild fishing, which further accelerates the reduction of the number of bluefin tuna.
Although bluefin tuna is the top predator in the ocean, it takes at least 3 years to mature, so once the population resources are destroyed, it is difficult to recover, unfortunately, the number of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic Ocean has decreased by 85%, the number of northern bluefin tuna in the Pacific Ocean has decreased by 96%, and three bluefin tuna have been listed in the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species, of which the southern bluefin tuna has the smallest number, which can be called the "giant panda in the water" that has been eaten.
Relevant data show that in 1961, the resource holding of bluefin tuna was about 170,000 tons, and in 2010 it fell sharply to 12,000 tons, even if the protection measures are in place, only 21,000 tons in 2016, and the number of bluefin tuna in the western Atlantic in 2020 is less than 13% in 1950.
Speaking of Japan, you are more familiar with it than I am, based on the restrictions of the island countries, only to put all their energy into the ocean, although the country is small, but the fishery production was once the world's first, once as high as 12.81 million tons per year, and the most emblematic of their almost crazy obsession with fishery resources, is the catch of bluefin tuna, in order to obtain the delicious taste of the entrance, Japan has proposed for three consecutive years to increase the catch quota of bluefin tuna, and even increase the quota of juvenile fish less than 30 kg by 10%, and break through the national fishing limit, At the same time, it also ignores the solemn protests made by the international community, which has brought great resistance to the protection of tuna.
Wild bluefin tuna has disappeared from the stomach of the Japanese in just a few decades, and unrestricted fishing has led to a bias toward miniaturization and juvenileization of catches, of which 98% of bluefin tuna are juveniles under 3 years of age. Japan not only preys on wild bluefin tuna, but also devotes itself to the fully artificial culture of tuna.
As early as 1970, University began related research, and every July and August, there are enough experimental research subjects to catch a little spawning fish in the Japanese waters on the doorstep of the country. After 32 years of painstaking research, he finally successfully bred the world's first fully artificially farmed bluefin tuna in June 2002, and has since mastered the right to eat "fat meat". In 2014, the production of bluefin tuna culture in Japan was as high as 15,000 tons, equivalent to the total catch of bluefin tuna in the Pacific Ocean that year, and in 2018, the amount of culture increased to 17,000 tons.
Even so, the people's stomachs are still filled with dissatisfaction, and in the face of international condemnation, they still put their so-called "food culture" above countless young bluefin tuna, resulting in many related protection programs being unable to be implemented. The decline in tuna will eventually lead to the ecological balance of the oceans as well as the acidification and desertification of the oceans.
Of course, some countries and Japan are the opposite, Canada is a typical representative, as one of the production areas of bluefin tuna, the fisheries department stipulates that only authorized fishing can be carried out, and only one boat can be caught a year, if there is a violation of the direct revocation of the captain's operating license, and can not apply for 5 years.
Fortunately, the five regional tuna management committees in various waters around the world are also coordinating the fishing quotas of various countries to combat illegal fishing activities, which to a certain extent ensures the sustainable use of bluefin tuna resources.