The prospect of tighter harvest limits on western Australian spiny lobster led a Japanese importer to look for alternate suppliers. They ended up with not only a new supplier of lobster but of abalone, too.
Fedecoop of Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, entered the Japanese live lobster and abalone market through a agreement with Tosenbo Co. of Ichihara City, Chiba Prefecture. The cooperative had already been exporting canned and frozen abalone meat under the brands Cedmex and Rocamar, mostly to China.
Baja California has a sustainably managed supply of spiny lobster, making it an attractive source. Since the importer was also sourcing abalone, the company figured that it might as well get it from the same source. Tosenbo said it will take time to raise the product quality and get shipments without mortality but considers it a good opportunity.
Fedecoop exhibited live and canned seafood products at the Foodex trade show near Tokyo in March. The coop harvests blue and green abalone, spiny lobster, turban shell sea snail and sea cucumber.
Also exhibiting was Wando Abalone Co. of South Korea. For systematic control of abalone production, Wando County, in South Jeolla Province, designated the company as the official distribution corporation in April 2010. Wando County is a region of small islands, where seaweed, the main feed for abalones, grows abundantly; 80 percent of the nation’s abalones are produced there in submerged cages.
The Korean Herald reported that while a few years ago one small natural abalone cost around KRW 60,000 (USD 50, EUR 40), seven or eight cultivated abalones cost KRW 70,000 to 80,000 (USD 59 to 67, EUR 47 to 54) this spring. High returns from abalone farms led to overproduction. But last year, by limiting licenses for growing abalone and mounting a nationwide campaign to encourage consumption, abalone was sold out during the autumn Chuseok and Lunar New Year holidays, the big consumption periods.
Establishment of the distribution organization was intended to cut out the middleman, to increase revenues to producers and broaden the market to the general public. Wando Abalone hopes to enter the Japanese and U.S. markets, but pins its greatest hope on China, the world’s largest abalone consumer.
Worldwide, South Africa had been a major supplier of wild abalone, but harvesting of the perlemoen (Haliotis midae) was closed in 2008 due to depletion by poaching, which is rampant and has been tied to other criminal activity.
Australia, another large supplier, is attempting to control the abalone virus Ganglioneuritis, a disease deadly to the mollusk, which has spread from a land-based abalone farm in Victoria and is spreading along the coast. However, the greenlip and blacklip abalone continue to be exported.
U.S. abalone production is small and is concentrated in northern California and Hawaii. The Abalone Farm in Cayucos, Calif., cultivates red abalone, while the Big Island Abalone Corp. produces the Japanese Ezo abalone (Haliotis discus hannai). Both companies use a land-based tank rearing system in contrast to the ocean-based systems of South Korea and Mexico.
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