A new wholesale market facility has been built specifically for handling tuna and bonito at Misaki Port in Miura City, Kanagawa Prefecture. Tuna and bonito were previously handled in the adjacent main wholesale auction area.
Misaki Port is one of the major offloading points and supply for the distant water fleet, since it is situated near the entrance of Tokyo Bay and has good transport links to the city. Its proximity also allows Tokyo residents to visit on gourmet tours. Special train tickets called “Misaki Maguro Day Trip Ticket” that include a meal and some local sightseeing are sold by Keikyu Railway.
With a floor area of 3,184 square meters, the new steel-frame two-story building is expected to contribute to tourism. Trading takes place at 8:30 a.m. on weekdays and tourists can view the activity from the second floor through windows.
The facility will also contribute to better quality fish being sold in the region. Tuna in the distant-water fisheries is frozen on-board to an ultra-low temperature of minus 60 degrees Celsius. The new facility maintains cold temperatures throughout handling. The bidding room is refrigerated to 15 degrees Celsius though the room for tourists on the second floor is at a normal room temperature. It also has double doors with curtains to prevent contaminants from entering, and a smooth floor to allow sliding the frozen tuna without damage.
The facility is intended to increase the renown of Misaki as a tuna port, and to turn around a 60 percent drop since 2003 in the volume of tuna handled. An employee at the Miura City, Economy Department, Wholesale Market Management Office told SeafoodSource that this was mainly due to a reduction in the number of vessels being operated and a decline in the resource, rather than a shift to other ports or markets.
Despite the general downward trend of tuna stocks, catches of bonito tuna, or “katsuo” in Japanese, have increased both in the main fishing ground near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, and near Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The new facility at can be expected to handle some of the catch from the distant water fishery.
In response to the strong supply, the wholesale price of frozen bonito tuna has fallen by 20 percent, to JPY 175 (USD 1.58, EUR 1.38) per kilogram, according to a Nippon Keizai Shimbun report. The amount handled at Yaizu Port in Shizuoka Prefecture increased by 60 percent in the first half of the year In June. The volume handled was 9,300 metric tons, an increase of 80 percent compared with the same month of the previous year, wholesale price at that market fell by 40 percent to JPY 151 (USD 1.36, EUR 1.19) per kilogram.
At the end of July, the average price of fresh bluefin tuna at the Tsukiji wholesale market was JPY 4,536 (USD 40.92, EUR 35.87) for domestic from Hokkaido and JPY 4,320 (USD 38.97, EUR 34.16) from other parts of Japan. Imported and domestic frozen product averaged JPY 3,164 (USD 28.55, EUR 25.02).
Imported fresh southern bluefin was as high as JPY 5,832 (USD 52.62, EUR 46.12) and as low as JPY 1,620 (USD 14.62, EUR 12.81), while imported and domestic frozen averaged JPY 1,938 (USD 17.48, EUR 15.33).
Fresh bigeye tuna from Miyagi Prefecture averaged JPY 2,700 (USD 24.36, EUR 21.35) while frozen (imports and domestic) averaged JPY 1,082 (USD 9.76, EUR 8.56).
Yellowfin from Okinawa was JPY 1,080 (USD 9.74, EUR 8.54), and frozen (imports and domestic) averaged JPY 1,082 (USD 9.76, EUR 8.56).
Photo courtesy of Miura City
