 "Photo: Joel Kutaka")
 "Photo: Joel Kutaka")
 "Photo: Joel Kutaka")
For – and in large part because of – sushi lovers, the prospect of an ‘ahi-less future is a frightening but ever-closer reality.
“We are not potentially overfishing species; we have been overfishing for years,” said Dr. Clyde Tamaru, aquaculture extension specialist for the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program. “By all accounts, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, and particularly the Western Atlantic stocks, have already been labeled overfished species.”
Dr. Tamaru explained that bluefin populations are so depleted that efforts are underway to add the bluefin tuna to the federal endangered species list.
While bigeye and yellowfin tuna, the two species of tuna grouped together as ‘ahi in Hawai‘i, are not as threatened as stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna, which have fallen to about 10 percent of their 1970 levels due to severe overfishing, once the lucrative bluefin reach critical levels, ‘ahi are sure to be next on the list as consumers adapt to changing market conditions.
But in the current economic downturn, convincing consumers to choose more sustainable options is proving to be an uphill battle.
Sophomore Donna Gonzales, a civil engineering major, worked at Genki Sushi for a little more than a year until she left in July 2009. She said she wasn’t aware of the whole sustainability movement, and neither, apparently, were her customers.
“Nobody ever asked about it (when I worked there),” Gonzales explained. “They complimented us on the way we cut the fish, but they never asked me where it’s from.”
Yet even Gonzales saw the effects of increased demand for tuna while she worked as a server – at one point Genki Sushi had to increase their prices on ‘ahi nigiri.
“They raised the prices on ‘ahi by a dollar, and people would usually still order it, but if they knew it wasn’t in their price range they wouldn’t,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales noted that the price increase was a result of the shop passing the price increases on to the consumer.
This doesn’t surprise Tamaru.
“Yes, overfishing results in a decrease in availability of product but not a decrease in demand,” he said. Market economics and seasonal fluctuations dictate the availability and price of all commodities, and tuna is no exception.
Like Gonzales, Keane Santos, a junior majoring in business, is also a server at a sushi restaurant. He works at Kochi, a slightly higher-end sushi bar with a more comprehensive menu, but he explained that even there he’s never actually been asked about sustainable options.
“We have the hardcore sushi people that come in and they know everything they want, so they’ll pretty much go straight off the menu,” Santos said. “Then there’s the people who just like simple things like California rolls.”
Neither category of customer has ever asked him about sustainable options, Santos said. If customers were to ever ask him, however, they would find that Kochi – and sushi bars like it – have both ideal and not-so-ideal options.
“We serve bluefin ... but that’s kind of seasonal,” Santos said. “We’re going to run out of it pretty soon. Mirugai is kind of hit-or-miss. Same thing with uni. Those are the more high-end stuff.”
While bluefin is one of the least sustainable options consumers could choose, wild mirugai (geoduck) and Canadian-farmed uni (sea urchin gonads) are ideal, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sustainable Seafood Guide. The guide lists more than 50 sushi selections and sorts them by sustainability, taking into account not only factors like harvesting methods but also origin and whether the seafood is farmed or wild-caught.
Tamaru, however, doesn’t believe the Monterey standards are the best way to determine the sustainability of a particular fish. That, he says, is best left to consumers to decide.
“Consumers (should educate themselves) about the various species, challenges and opportunities and come to their own conclusions,” Tamaru said. “The responsibility is yours to become better informed to make a decision that you can live with and support.”
Economic Parallel
Sustainablity, however, means different things to different people.
“There is an ongoing debate that aquaculture of carnivorous species are unsustainable as one is simply taking other fish to produce a certain kind of fish,” Tamaru said. He explained that it often takes anywhere from two to four pounds of fishmeal to farm a single pound of carnivorous fish, a proportion Tamaru refers to as a food conversion ratio, or FCR.
“What is not often brought to the attention of consumers is that current FCRs have been dropping over the last decade, indicating that fish farmers and feed manufacturers have responded to this concern,” he said. Tamaru noted that fish farming has actually become more efficient than land-based meat production.
This dependence on fishmeal-based aquaculture is not one that is easy for farmers to address, though the technology to replace fishmeal as an aquaculture feed has been in place since the 1990s.
Simply put, it is a question of economy.
“The analogy is the current situation with gasoline,” Tamaru explained. “I chose to purchase an automobile that uses gasoline as the main source of fuel. I chose not to purchase the new Honda hybrid models because at the time it cost too much over the conventional models. However, it is also clear that gasoline as we know it today will decrease in availability and as prices increase this will cause us to use alternative means of fuel or other transportation options.”
To Tamaru, sustainability is not something that is a strict black-and-white concept but rather a large gray area, and the closer we get to sustainable practices in production the sooner we can save fish stocks.
But all the sustainable practices in the world won’t do any good if consumers aren’t aware of their options when making buying decisions.
Sustainability Vs. Quality
Guy Tamashiro’s name should be famaliar to anyone buying or selling seafood in Hawai‘i; he is the vice president of Tamashiro Market in Kalihi, which now at 62 years in business is one of the state’s oldest local seafood markets in one of the state’s oldest communities.
His customers are not the type to worry about sustainability, at least for now. His main concern when it comes to his customers is the value he’s able to provide them.
“The question of sustainability never comes up,” Tamashiro said. “(My customers) just wanna know what’s fresh, what’s a good deal, if their favorite fish is in.”
Tamashiro is aware of sustainability concerns, but he says that his purchasing decisions as far as harvesting methods go all stem from a concern about quality.
By chance, his preferred catch method – longline – is not only a better option for the environment than trawl-caught tuna, but also results in better quality loins.
“You can get a tail cut and see what grade a longline-caught ‘ahi is, but there’s a chance that a trawl line-caught fish would be burnt-out, grill-grade stuff,” Tamashiro said.
This “burnt” flesh occurs when tuna struggle too much before they are drawn onto fishing boats.
“Lactic acid builds up in the muscle and literally cooks the meat from the inside,” Tamashiro said.
Tamashiro admits he sees less burnt-out tuna from trawlers as time goes on, but it happens more often with trawlers than with long-line vessels, he explained. Trawlers dragging their gear across the ocean floor give tuna more of an opportunity to struggle while they damage coral and other ocean floor life.
For conservationists, it’s a sustainability issue, but for Tamashiro, the problem is quality.
Tamashiro, however, says that he is not opposed to the idea of educating consumers about their options if they start to express interest.
“If we have more customers asking about it, we might talk about it more, but people right now want a good value for their money,” Tamashiro said. “We pretty much sell the same fish they do (at other markets.)
“If even 10 percent of our customers started asking about it, though, we might even start posting up some signs.”
Source: montereybayaquarium.org
Source: montereybayaquarium.org
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