The Toxic Saga of the Tsukiji Fish Market

https://www.eater.com/2017/7/25/16019906/tokyo-tsukiji-toyosu-olympics-delay

by fern12 • 9 years ago

140 76 9 years ago

partycoder4• 9 years ago

One of the few fish markets selling whale meat. But the tourist community keeps tolerating it.

update: And for some reason I get downvoted for denouncing something that is against our best interest... whales regulate the oceanic carbon cycle. You kill them and contribute to ocean acidification.

Cacti• 9 years ago

Alright, I'll bite, _how much_ do they regulate the carbon cycle?

kobeya• 9 years ago

I believe he is referencing the fact that "whale falls" (the ecosystem that subsists for decades on the corpse of a whale that died and sank in deep water) move the mass of the whale to the deep ocean, where it typically doesn't surface except on geologic time.

The obvious counter is that even at pre-human population levels the whales are an insignificant fraction of the shallow ocean biomass, and that artificial algea blooms over deep water could easily replace this carbon transfer in a sustainable way.

Perhaps more interesting is that the lack of whale falls has probably already driven to extinction many of the deep water species that prey on the drop sites. Those that are left are at risk. And at least until we can catalog the genetic diversity of these ecosystems, that could be a tremendous loss. There may be biological processes adapted there that are useful to us, in bio-engineering or medicine.

partycoder4• 9 years ago

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2928761/

sampo• 9 years ago

_how much_ do they regulate the carbon cycle?

"We estimate that rebuilding whale populations would remove 1.6×10^5 tons of carbon each year through sinking whale carcasses." [1]

"these changes are small relative to the total ocean carbon sink" [1]

The total ocean carbon sink is 10^9 tons of carbon each year [2]. So the changes in whale populations have had a 0.016% influence on the ocean carbon sink. So, not much.

But in the future when different geoengineering methods are suggested, maybe their impact in terms of tons of carbon per year could be compared to the size of this effect of stopping whaling altogether.

[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink

hellofunk• 9 years ago

That is unfortunate. Whale hunting is illegal now in many countries, but the Japanese do like whale meat and continue to find ways to hunt them. I saw an interesting documentary maybe 4 years ago about how some hunting ships would find whales under the guise of science research, but really harvest them for food. Some countries stopped honoring the scientific licenses of the Japanese ships that allowed them to enter their waters. I'm not sure how much the affinity for whale meat has to do with tourism, though.

partycoder4• 9 years ago

The research rhetoric itself is questionable. Research is expected to at least produce some report or publication, but many of them have produced neither for years.

labster• 9 years ago

The Japanese people largely don't like whale meat. Its sales have been declining and they're having a hard time convincing children to eat this weird fatty meat. Japanese whaling probably won't last another generation. But the Japanese do like tradition, so for now, whale hunting persists.

seiferteric• 9 years ago

Honestly the entire seafood industry is a disaster. Nearly 80% of the ocean biomass has been destroyed. It's the only part of the food system that still relies on hunting wild populations of animals and between the many countries involved, it's really hard to regulate how much is really being taken. It's very depressing how many species are on the brink because of this.

rodgerd• 9 years ago

It's the food equivalent of oil drilling. Oddly enough, it seems many folks who are uncomfortable eating land animals for ethical reasons have no qualms about strip-mining the oceans.

Larrikin2• 9 years ago

I'm not for or against, I just don't understand the market. I had whale prepared a few different ways in Japan and they only decent preparation was thinly sliced and raw. It just tasted like a tougher, slightly fishier, worse version of beef. I could understand it if it was significantly cheaper than beef, since domestic and even imported beef can be pricey. But it's often times more expensive than anything but the highest quality.

I expect the market will slowly collapse as the Japanese who grew up eating it in school slowly die out. Most people my age had never even eaten it.

dnautics• 9 years ago

Someone once told me that the actual delicacy is whale blubber. You have to figure out what to do with the rest of the whale.

partycoder4• 9 years ago

Can't you just eat something else?

sandworm1012• 9 years ago

It's an old people thing. Once upon a time whale meat was served in Japanese schools. Those who grew up eating it want to eat it now. They are dying out and the younger generations (us) have no taste for the meat.

Try finding anyone in the UK under 60 willing to eat tripe or jellied eels.

etiam• 9 years ago

I have seen it suggested that it comes down to bureaucratic territory marking.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35397749

Reads like something from the darker portions of a Douglas Adams novel, but I find it entirely plausible.

rsync• 9 years ago

"update: And for some reason I get downvoted for denouncing something that is against our best interest..."

I downvoted you for complaining about, or questioning, your downvotes.

Don't do that.

cooper122• 9 years ago

You sure put them in their place. +1 e-peen. That'll teach those damn karma whores. Keep fighting the good fight. Fugg the whales xD.

fiblye• 9 years ago

A few hundred whales, particularly the non-endangered minke whales targeted by Japan, won't disrupt anything. The west's obsession with beef is a much larger environmental issue than eating whale ever will be.

On that note, much of the whale I've seen, bought, and eaten in Japan has come from Iceland. Norway also seems to kill more whales than Japan does, yet the whaling in Europe is completely ignored. Japan's "otherness" makes it easy to target them, and it's obvious since I see the whaling issue frequently come up even when it's not related to the topic at all aside from "Japan" or "fishing" being mentioned.

NegativeLatency• 9 years ago

It's really frustrating how hard it is to properly manage/use a resource like the ocean.

We're not running out of chicken, but we are running out of fish.

sandworm1012• 9 years ago

Because we are feeding the fish to the chickens. We provide the calories for the chicken to grow, but we harvest fish without such inputs. If we were harvesting wild chickens, or at least chickens that caught their own food in the wild, we would certainly wipe them out in a matter of days if not hours.

HillaryBriss2• 9 years ago

we're also feeding fish meal (from the ocean) to farmed salmon in aquaculture operations

i think it was Cousteau who said that farming carnivorous fish like salmon was just a terrible idea. it requires a really high ratio of fish meal protein to salmon protein, something like 6 to 1.

we'd be better off farming more fish that behave like Tilapia. they can eat their own excrement.

Iv• 9 years ago

Fish farms are a thing too (and an ecological problem)

rbobby• 9 years ago

Passenger pigeons were hunted to extinction as food for humans. Last one died in 1914. Hunting supposedly intensified sometime in the 1800's... so probably significantly less than 100 years to hunt a bird species to extinction.

duncan_bayne3• 9 years ago

Tragedy of the commons. If people owned areas of the ocean in the way they own areas of land for farming, this would be less of an issue.

gumby• 9 years ago

Look how Victor Harbour in South Australia managed its fishing allocations for a great example of how to pull this kind of thing off. But it’s not easy.

Sangermaine• 9 years ago

It's not quite as easy with the ocean. Land doesn't tend to flow around freely.

wavefunction• 9 years ago

There are plenty of examples of well-managed fisheries but it takes cooperation with/from the fisherman and enforcing the regulations so that fisheries remain sustainable.

Here's a list of North American fisheries, some of which are well managed: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/statusoffisheries/2011/second/Q...

chrismealy• 9 years ago

Unless the oceans had a low rate of return, then you would kill all the fish as quickly as possible and invest the proceeds in higher-returning assets.

TorKlingberg• 9 years ago

Just convince the fish to stay in their registered area.

fapjacks• 9 years ago

For others interested in solutions, look at the traditional Swedish farmer's methods of managing common resources. Actually a Nobel Prize was awarded based on work documenting and implementing these and similar practices in far-flung areas of the world in need of them (e.g. cod fishing in the Atlantic, common resources in Africa, etc).

belorn• 9 years ago

We are running out of the very small selection of species of fish that we want to buy. The wast majority of fish belong to those that we don't want to buy, which either get thrown away or sold for almost nothing in order to be smashed into animal feed.

To say that we are running out of fish (generally) is problematic since there is overpopulation problems in lakes near where I live. The problem is that the fish isn't the kind that people want to buy, so fishermen goes where the money is.

Yizahi• 9 years ago

Actually in long term we are running out of all fish due to acidification of the oceans. But that will happen much further in the future.

pvaldes3• 9 years ago

Fish discarded are dead also.

donw• 9 years ago

Funnily enough, I live in Toyosu, and can see where the market should have been moved to from my house.

The cause is simple enough: graft and corruption on all levels and at a massive scale, exposed in large part by Yuriko Koike (the relatively new governor of Tokyo).

Reason077• 9 years ago

Some similarities to the Berlin Brandenburg Airport saga. They were only a few weeks away from a planned move of all the airlines into the new airport in 2012, when it turned out there were massive flaws in the design and construction, and allegations of corruption.

Now it's 2017 and the airport still isn't ready... Maybe 2019?

https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/01/e...

bogomipz2• 9 years ago

"Tsukiji is the most exalted fish market on earth, the sort of humbling place that causes the likes of globally worshipped god-chef René Redzepi to deem it one of the “seven culinary wonders of the world.”

What a cringe-worthy sentence that is. Also what a load of crap that sentence is. I'm guessing the writer has never actually been. Tsukiji is a wholesale fish market. Its smelly, cold and wet with lots of flash frozen fish sitting on warehouse pallets. Just like what you would expect a wholesale fish market to be. It just happens to be in Tokyo.

URSpider942• 9 years ago

I highly disagree. I have visited many times, and I find it to be a truly magical place. The mind-boggling variety of life from the sea, the frenetic energy, and the tuna auctioned for tens of thousands of dollars - it made an indelible impression on me.

bogomipz2• 9 years ago

"I highly disagree. I have visited many times, and I find it to be a truly magical place."

I am curious how many other fish markets have you been to?

Mexico City and New York City have similar scale fish markets with just as many varieties and with just as much commerce. I'm guessing someone like Anthony Bourdain or some other TV food celebrity put Tsukiji on the tourist map and so now people feel compelled to see something special in it.

And I honestly can't understand why anyone would get up before dawn to go to a 5:30AM fish auction if they didn't work in the business and understood Japanese.

ekianjo5• 9 years ago

Most fish markets in Japan are like that. Tsukiji is just bigger. Actually it's dirty there and it's in a poorly maintained area of Tokyo that was never made for that in the first place. The fish market in Sapporo is much, much nicer.

jdietrich• 9 years ago

the tuna auctioned for tens of thousands of dollars

I'm not sure that the trade in endangered species is anything to get excited about.

trhway• 9 years ago

It’s also fairly obvious that the fishmongers weren’t widely consulted during the construction process. The shiny new stalls for vendors are closed off in an attempt to be more sanitary, but the design deeply limits the mobility of the fishmongers, especially when cutting large hunks of fish. (In one television program about the new space, a wholesaler showed just how difficult it is to go about his business of slicing tuna as his elbows repeatedly bumped up against the cubicle-tight walls.)

s/fishmongers/programmers/g

"It’s also fairly obvious that the programmers weren’t widely consulted during the office remodeling process. The shiny new office for the programmers is an open space in an attempt to be a more collaborative environment, but the design deeply limits the ability to focus of the programmers, especially when working on the complex pieces of code. (In one twitter periscope stream about the new space, a programmer live tweeted just how difficult it is to go about his business of coding as his focus was repeatedly broken and/or his attention was repeatedly called for by the multitude of other people's happenings in the wide open space of the office around him.)

smegel• 9 years ago

For a country that functions so well, it's amazing it can still have such occurrences of dysfunction and corruption. Sounds like this mayor would be a good prime minister.

The Toxic Saga of the Tsukiji Fish Market

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