By Elaine Lies
Tokyo - A full moon hangs low in the pre-dawn Tokyo sky as the tuna auction gets under way.
"Good morning!" the auctioneer shouts before launching into a rapid chant, knees bending rhythmically and fist pumping the air, while poker-faced men in front of him hold up their fingers over rows of frozen fish lining the cement floor.
In moments it is over and a huge tuna, over a metre long, is dragged away. By nightfall, it will be on tables around the city, commanding top prices from eager diners.
| 'To take action to reduce fishing efforts is very, very painful politically' |
As Japanese gourmets dig in, few are aware that their cherished delicacy could one day vanish, victim of a voracious global appetite for fish that has led to widespread overfishing and pushed many species, including some varieties of bluefin tuna, close to the edge.
According to the United Nations, more than 70 percent of the world's commercially important fish stocks are either over-exploited, depleted, slowly recovering or close to the maximum sustainable level of exploitation.
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Delegates from around the globe have been in Kuala Lumpur this week for a meeting of parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which began on February 9.
The UN agreement is intended to slow the rate of global extinctions of animals and plants significantly by 2010, including via marine protected areas.
"Every year too much is being put under pressure," said Serge Garcia, director of the Fisheries Resources Division at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome.
"All the high-value resources are in trouble."
Threats to sea life come from fishing practises that result in discarding unwanted fish, inefficient use of the fish once caught, and, environmental groups say, trawlers that scrape the ocean bed with nets, heavy chains and steel plates.
But at bottom, it is driven by simple market factors, of which Japan's huge demand for prime seafood, especially bluefin tuna, is a crucial part.
At Tokyo's central Tsukiji fish market, where about $18,9-million (about RR125-million) of seafood is sold daily, there are no signs of shortage.
Shrimp, scallops and octopus are heaped on ice, crabs and sea bream nestle in styrofoam boxes. Flounders flap in shallow trays near where men cut tuna apart with electric saws and adzes.
Even in Japan, the world's largest overall fish consumer, tuna in many ways is king. In 2002 alone, 460 000 tons of tuna was consumed raw, with the most coveted being the fatty meat near the pectoral fins by the head, known as toro.
"Japanese especially like raw fish, but unless it's really fatty it's no good," said Hisao Nagayama, who researches food history. "The parts of the fish we eat are actually rather few.
"But resources are falling and we can't just eat everything we want these days. We have to do something about fish stocks."
Governments are reaching the same conclusion.
In one signal of their determination to tackle the problem, last year's Johannesburg Earth Summit reached an agreement to aim at restoring stocks to a sustainable level by 2015 at the latest.
Experts say measures such as closing seasons, closing areas or limiting access, though, tend to have limited effectiveness because, even though the number of fishing vessels may drop, their rising efficiency means the amount taken does not diminish.
"This (lack of abundance) isn't being reflected in the fish catch, which is now being taken by many more boats with much more clever gear," said Meryl Williams, director-general of the World Fish Centre in Penang. "And with that effort you can sustain a higher catch than the low abundance might suggest."
The kind of fish taken has also changed. Larger, more expensive fish are disappearing, their place taken by smaller and faster-growing species - with rising prices keeping the overall catch value up, making it hard to see the true state of the sea.
"To take action to reduce fishing efforts is very, very painful politically," Williams added. "It requires a lot of political will and a lot of consultation."
Nonetheless, some progress is being made. Waste, in terms of discarded fish as well as by-catch - fish caught by accident - appears to be diminishing, while some governments are coming up with schemes to sustain key fish stocks.
And in the town of Kushimoto, 450km west of Tokyo, researchers for two years in a row have successfully hatched bluefin tuna from eggs laid by fish bred and raised entirely in captivity - a world first.
While currently only around 2 500 of these fry have survived to be raised in the research centre's pens, hopes for the future are high, said researcher Tokihiko Okada.
"Our final goal is being able to avoid taking wild bluefin at all - and then, to help restore the wild stock."
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