Sushi-loving Japan fears tuna limits

TOKYO – Seafood-loving Japan – having faced years of international pressure to stop whaling – finds itself with a potentially bigger fight over a highly prized type of tuna that conservation groups say is being fished to extinction.

A proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna – vaunted for its succulent red and pink meat – could slash supplies and drive up prices in Japan, the world’s biggest consumer and importer of the fish.

Talk of banning imports of the species has made some Japanese feel their very way of life is under attack. The fish is often served as sushi, the iconic Japanese dish.

“Any ban is going to have a big impact culturally and economically,” said Masaru Nakazawa, a 63-year-old wholesaler at Tokyo’s sprawling Tsukiji fish market.

But environmentalists say the Atlantic bluefin is a vanishing species and insist a ban on its export by the world body that governs wildlife trade is the last chance to save it in the face of skyrocketing global demand and a failure by governments to abide by existing quotas.

Bluefin tuna, of which the Atlantic and Pacific are the most common species, is served in upscale sushi restaurants worldwide – but any export ban would hit Japan hardest.

Japan buys nearly 80 percent of the annual Atlantic bluefin catch. Atlantic bluefin accounted for about half the 47,400 tons of bluefin tuna that Japan consumed in 2008, the last year for which statistics were available. The other half came mostly from the Pacific.

Member countries of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, will consider the proposed ban at a meeting in Qatar in March. Monaco, which proposed the measure, said the bluefin species numbers have fallen by nearly 75 percent since 1957, with most of the declines occurring in the past decade.

If the proposal is approved, Atlantic bluefin would be listed in Appendix 1 of the convention, which would allow only domestic consumption within countries of the European Union. Activists say that would lower the catch substantially because shipments to Japan would be prohibited.

A ban would also likely raise prices for bluefin in the U.S. But the biggest impact would be consumer awareness. “If (Atlantic) bluefin tuna becomes an endangered species, that’s big news. That will wake a lot of people up,” said Trevor Corson, the author of “The Story of Sushi.”

The listing is the toughest action possible and activists expect a fierce fight over the proposed ban, led by Japan and southern European nations that catch the bulk of Atlantic bluefin including Turkey, Spain, Greece, Italy and Malta, where thousands of jobs depend on catching and shipping the fish to Japan.

Francois Simard, a fisheries expert, predicts that Japan could support the species being listed on Annex II, which would tighten the international trade but not ban it.