Tuna collapse fears fail to curb Japan's appetite
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An employee of Kiyomura Co poses with a head of a bluefin tuna at Sushi Zanmai restaurant near Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. A single full-grown bluefin an sell for 2 million yen or S$26,800, at Tokyo's sprawling Tsukiji fish market. -- PHOTO: AP
TOKYO (AP) - It is the king of sushi, one of the most expensive fish in the world - and dwindling so rapidly that some fear it could vanish from restaurant menus within a generation.
Yet there is little alarm in Japan, the country that consumes about 80 per cent of the world's bluefin tuna. Japanese fisheries experts blame cozy ties between regulators and fishermen and a complacent media for failing to raise public awareness.
"Nobody really knows the bad state bluefin tuna is in," veteran sushi chef Kazuo Nagayama said from his snug, top-end sushi bar in Tokyo's Shimbashi district, a popular area for after-work socialising.
"I don't think it'll disappear, but we might not be able to catch any. It's obvious we need to set quotas."
