Chris Loew

Tokyo, Japan-based General Oyster Corporation has developed an innovative purification system that aims to eliminate instances of vibrio and norovirus in its products on a mass scale, as instances of both have resulted in recent recalls and general wariness among consumers.

Consumer anxiety around the safety of oysters is particularly prevalent in Japan, where diners rarely eat oysters raw due to the country’s warm, subtropical waters that

U.S. sanctions are forcing Russian crab suppliers to find new markets, and Japan has become a new destination for deeply discounted king crab, snow crab, and horsehair crab.

The U.S., which was formerly the biggest purchaser of crab from Russia, introduced an embargo on imports of Russian seafood in March 2022 as part of sanctions related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The country recently expanded that ban to include products that stem

In an attempt to further the discussions held at 2023’s Tokyo Sustainable Seafood Summit (TSSS), an industry workshop took place after the event that aimed to get sweeping opinions on the merit of using electronic monitoring (EM) on vessels operating within the waters overseen by regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs).

The latest edition of TSSS, which took place in October 2023, included talks on preventing labor abuse in the

Juvenile Pacific bluefin tuna are plentiful in Japanese coastal waters, but the country’s fishermen aren’t celebrating as a low total allowable catch (TAC) is forcing them to release target fish to avoid catching too many bluefin, losing out on lucrative mackerel and yellowtail in the process.

Juvenile bluefin – defined as bluefin under 30 kilograms – is considered a choke species, or a species with a small quota often

FRD Japan – one of four companies in the country working on large-scale, land-based recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) salmonid-farming projects in the country – is touting its energy-efficient system as it continues construction of its commercial-scale facility.

FRD, which focuses on rainbow trout production, said its land-based system avoids introducing wasted feed or fish feces into the ocean and does not create a

China has maintained its ban on Japanese seafood following the controversial release of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, despite recent promises of a review, but some products that fall under the broad category of “marine products” are still entering the country.

Following the ban, which went into effect in August, Japan’s seafood exports to China plunged 90.8 percent year over year dipping

Tokyo, Japan-based Kyodo Senpaku is set to replace its aging mothership with a new model, signaling Japan’s continued commitment to whaling.

Kyodo Senpaku the only company in the world still employing the mothership system of whaling. The system uses more agile ships to hunt for whales, which then transfer carcasses onto a mothership for freezing and storage instead of bringing them to land-based storage facilities. Kyodo Senpaku’s

Ichiro Miyashita, Japan’s minister of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, recently suggested having Japanese prisoners shuck scallops to alleviate the lack of manual labor in the country’s seafood-processing sector – but he abandoned the plan after discovering that the U.S. and Canada don’t allow imported products made with prison labor in their supply chains.

The scheme, which Miyashita unveiled on 20 October, would

Numerous NGOs have been pushing for regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) to adopt harvest strategies as a means of effectively managing seafood stocks, but even their fiercest advocates admit the path toward their adoption isn’t easy.

A harvest strategy is a method in which RFMOs and other fisheries managers develop predetermined actions that trigger when stock assessments, catch data, and return on effort – among