It's time to boycott bluefin tuna stunt

Giant bluefin tuna fisherman Yukinobu Shibata. (Wikipedia)

Mitsuwa Marketplace, the large Japanese supermarket in Edgewater, is staging its "Giant Fresh Bluefin Tuna Festival" this weekend, but anyone with a conscience will stay away, as I have for two years.

I admit that I attended the carving of these beautiful, fast-swimming fish into sashimi by a small army of store workers, as customers pressed against counters on all sides.

And I paid $60 a pound for the prized belly meat -- wrapped in plastic on foam trays -- but that is all in the past.

Japan's voracious appetite for the giant bluefin tuna has driven the fish onto the endangered list, and consuming its mercury-rich flesh is unhealthy.

It's puzzling that Mitsuwa claims the bluefin tuna it will sell this weekend is "fresh."

I have seen only frozen whole bluefin tunas that thawed out and were beheaded before they were carved up.  

The bluefin tuna festival was delayed by Superstorm Sandy, which hit New Jersey on Oct. 29.

Maybe God, Mother Nature or another great force was trying to tell us something.