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.
 

Some tunas should only be eaten raw

 After my bad experience cooking bluefin tuna yesterday, I've decided that some tunas are suited only for eating as sushi and sashimi. See earlier post, "Pushing and shoving for giant bluefin tuna."

And in view of dwindling supplies, I may swear off eating the sushi, too. See the following link on rejection of a proposed fishing ban:
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8362168.stm

 
Not only was cooking the giant tuna's collar a mess, I don't like the smell of the oil that came out of the fish in great abundance. Now I have a container of leftover, cooked fish I'm not sure I want to eat, because of the way it smells. This was nothing like the small, grilled collar of yellow tail, or hamachi, I have tried in Japanese restaurants. I've never seen cooked bluefin tuna on a menu, perhaps because it is too expensive.

Michael, the narrator during Sunday's "cutting performance" at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, said he is a commercial fisherman who catches bluefin tuna with rod and reel, and enjoys a raw meal of it two or three times a week, without concern about mercury. But he seems to have incomplete knowledge about mercury in fish, believing the deeper the fish swims, the greater the mercury, when most experts say the biggeest fish have the most mercury, which is said to be especially harmful to young women and children. He said he believes swordfish has more mercury than giant bluefin tuna.

He called the species giant bluefin tuna, while others refer to it as Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Pushing and shoving for giant bluefin tuna

Image via Wikipedia

Hundreds of Mitsuwa Marketplace customers watched in awe today as more than a dozen workers reduced a giant bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Spain to sushi and small blocks of sashimi.

The narrator, a Long Island commercial fisherman named Michael, said the dressed fish -- minus head, tail and innards -- weighed 680 pounds, the largest ever at the Edgewater Japanese supermarket's annual "cutting performances." The total weight was around 1,000 pounds.

Michael is clearly fascinated with this magnificent creature and he pointed out how the giant tuna can retract its fins into "pockets" for further streamlining. This tuna was caught by rod and reel as it was gorging itself  in preparation for migration to warmer waters, so it was near its maximum weight. It was then bled and immersed in icy water before being flown to the U.S.

They grow so large, the Japanese refer to them as "swimming buffalo," he said.

Michael said giant bluefin tuna -- the biggest tuna species --  contain beneficial Omega-7 fatty acids and that pieces of oh-toro, well-marbled belly meat, are sold in Manhattan sushi restaurants for $12 to $16 a piece. At last year's performance, the oh-toro cost about $60 a pound and I bought a quarter pound  for about $15. The price this year was $62.99 a pound, and I had to take more than a half pound for about $33.


As the fish was being cut into smaller pieces, weighed, labeled and wrapped, people in the crowd started pressing forward and reaching over others for packages from individual workers, signaling a breakdown of the system where people lined up to make purchases. I even saw one worker give free, unwrapped fish to people he seemed to know. Michael said that on Saturday, when two giant bluefin tunas were cut up, he witnessed a shoving match between two men.

Also this year, one section of the tuna's large collar was offered for sale, and I grabbed it for $30. They gave it to me in a large garbage bag with a price label affixed. The piece was about 21 inches long and weighed close to 9 pounds, but when I got it home, it didn't fit into my pan. I roasted it for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees and I've never seen fish give up so much oil, which dripped onto the bottom of the oven and started smoking.

I ate some of the medium- to dark-red flesh raw before putting the collar into the oven. When cooked, it was a little easier to remove the meat and I harvested about two pounds. The kitchen was a mess, with oil and bits of fish, cartilage and skin all over the place. Buying the collar turned out to be a mistake. Luckily, the harried cashier rang it up for 30 cents, instead of $30.