Farming Bluefin tuna for Japanese market... In Spain
Not Baja fishing, but reminded me of the Ensenada pens, and Japan's constant hunger for bigger, more tender, fatter farmed fish. +A traditional way of
fishing is more endangered than the tuna...
(From the New York Times)
Spanish Tuna Fishing Melds to Japan’s Taste, Endangering a 3,000-Year-Old Technique
Bluefin tuna were surrounded by fishing nets in an ancient technique known as almadraba, as the fishing season opened off southern Spain. Credit Laura
Leon for The New York Times
BARBATE, Spain — The fishing boats, swaying in the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, maneuvered one recent morning around
an intricate architecture of nets they had laid as a trap. Then the fishermen lifted just one section from the water, heavy with their prize.
Dozens of bluefin tuna rose to the choppy surface, thrashing wildly until, exhausted and asphyxiated, the fish gave up the fight, and the fishermen
hoisted them onboard by the tail.
This trap-fishing method, known as almadraba in Spanish, is considered the oldest form of industrial fishing in the world, dating 3,000 years to the
Phoenicians.
Even if the tuna’s final struggle and killing with a knife can appear violent, the almadraba has been praised as a sustainable way of fishing. While
the boats and nets have been modernized, the method itself has remained largely the same over millenniums.
But change is slowly underway. In response to fishing quotas and the demands of consumers in Japan, the world’s largest tuna market, the companies
that run the almadraba are shifting to “ranch” fishing to help fatten the tuna, rather than lifting and killing their catch.
The shift to ranching is “putting at risk a very traditional fishing method, because trying to fatten fish is really different to the original goal,”
said Carlos Montero, fisheries manager for Spain and Portugal at the Marine Stewardship Council, a nongovernment organization.
Already, one of the four almadraba companies operating along Spain’s southern coast has all but stopped the levantá, or hoisting of the trap, the most
dramatic and spectacular part of the almadraba.
The company still uses a labyrinth of nets to trap the fish, but it channels the tuna to an adjacent open-water pool, where they are ranched for four
months before being killed, frozen and shipped to Japan.
Other almadraba companies are following suit. “Farmed tuna has more fat than wild tuna — and the Japanese like that,” said Tetsuya Inagaki, a manager
at Maruha Nichiro, one of Japan’s largest fish distributors.
So valued is the bluefin that by the 1990s stocks were depleted by overfishing, including by tuna boats that drag purse seines, or large walls of
netting that can sweep up an entire school.
In 2006, tuna-fishing nations responded by agreeing to strict fishing quotas under a 15-year recovery plan. That has helped stocks recover somewhat,
but the extraordinarily high value of the bluefin means illegal and unreported fishing continues.
But the almadraba fishermen say their method has been unfairly punished for the past fishing excesses of others, not least because in their method,
only adult tuna — weighing on average around 440 pounds each — are trapped and lifted in their large mesh nets.
“No other fishing gear in the history of mankind has proven itself to be as sound, efficient, selective and yet so sustainable and
environmental-friendly,” said a study on the almadraba published in April by the Committee on Fisheries of the European Parliament.
Rafael Márquez, the second officer of the Cabo Plata almadraba, said he was the fourth generation in his family to be part of an almadraba crew.
“We’ve coexisted for 3,000 years with this species — and certainly as long as we can remember in my family,” Mr. Márquez said.
The almadraba fishermen work on a seasonal contract — and then find other work for the rest of the year or, more likely, claim unemployment
compensation. The southern Spanish region of Andalusia has a jobless rate of 34 percent.
“The only real change is that it used to be pretty easy to find another job around the port during the off-season, but it’s now almost impossible,”
said Fernando Mendoza, who retired last year after 40 years of almadraba fishing.
The almadraba season starts in February and runs six months, mostly spent on assembling and then dismantling its complex structure of nets and
anchors.
The nets form chambers through which the tuna swim until they are trapped in the chamber that is hoisted up.
The fishermen even drop white canvas sheets into the water to mimic the underbelly of an orca, the tuna’s predator, and help drive the fish to the
last chamber.
“Setting up an almadraba is like an architectural project, using all sorts of material, from steel to rubber,” Mr. Márquez said.
The fishing itself only takes place around May, when the tuna swim through the Strait of Gibraltar into the warmer waters of the Mediterranean to
spawn after building up blubber during their winter in the colder Atlantic.
The fat is in part what makes bluefin tuna such a delicacy, to the point that the Japanese have recently been paying more for ranched rather than wild
tuna, according to Diego Crespo Sevilla, the chief executive of the family-owned Cabo Plata.
Mr. Crespo said his company was also considering switching at least part of its activity to tuna ranching next year.
Atlantic bluefin tuna were lifted by a crane during the recent opening of tuna-fishing season off the coast of southern Spain. Credit Laura Leon for
The New York Times
“I really believe wild tuna has more flavor, but I understand tastes differ,” Mr. Crespo said. “What might work best for the Spanish market isn’t
going to be necessarily the same in Sapporo or Tokyo.”
Pedro Muñoz, a partner at Petaca Chico, the almadraba company that now ranches four-fifths of its tuna, said fishing quotas had pushed companies to
switch to ranching to remain profitable. For 2015, Spain’s almadrabas were allowed to catch some 2,200 pounds of tuna, about half of what they hoisted
a decade ago.
“If they weren’t such quotas, we would just be relying on our old fishing ways,” Mr. Muñoz said. “My dream is to reverse the trend and go back only to
wild tuna, but dreaming is for free, while running a business requires money.”
In fact, some executives argue that quotas have become unnecessary as tuna have returned en masse to the Mediterranean.
Last November, the international commission that monitors tuna fishing agreed to raise the catch by 20 percent — with strong backing from European
fishermen.
The European Commissioner for fisheries, Karmenu Vella, said last month that “bluefin tuna, an emblematic stock nearing collapse, is back to life.”
Still, Mr. Montero of the Marine Stewardship Council, which runs a sustainable fishing certification program, argued that it would be “very wrong” to
declare victory in efforts to protect the bluefin tuna.
“We’re on the right path but not there yet,” he said. He also noted that, before tough controls came into force, almadraba companies had underreported
their catch, like others in the fishing industry.
For now, however, tuna ranching is on the rise, according to fishing experts, however attached almadraba fishermen are to their ancient hoisting and
killing methods.
“Traditions are very important, but pricing drives the market,” said Alfonso Vidal, a Spanish fishing inspector. “A migratory fish doesn’t build up
fat in the same way if stuck in a pool, but I’d also be lying if I said that I could easily taste the difference between wild and ranched tuna.”
\"Probably the airplanes will bring week-enders from Los Angeles before long, and the beautiful poor bedraggled old town will bloom with a
Floridian ugliness.\" (John Steinbeck, 1940, discussing the future of La Paz, BCS, Mexico)
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