The USD 750,000 Pacific bluefin tuna sold on the first business day of 2012 at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market represents the price of publicity rather than fish. A better indication of the market is the second-highest fish, which sold for JPY 25,000 per kilogram (USD 326, EUR 255). The lower end of the range for fresh domestic bluefin was around JPY 20,000, with the average 20 percent up from 2011’s opening.
Poor landings due to bad weather at the end of the year reduced fresh stocks at the market. More domestic bluefin were sold than at last year’s opener, but fewer were over 100 kilograms, which are priced higher.
The first day of trading in bluefin gets increased attention because the price is seen as an indicator of national consumer sentiment, but since 2008 the price has been influenced more by supply restrictions than demand.
A wholesale trader at Tsukiji said consumer resistance has held bluefin prices below what might be expected, given tighter catch quotas, lower domestic catch due to tsunami damage and a drawdown of frozen inventory. Over the previous year, major seafood companies had built up large frozen inventories to soften the impact of expected quota tightening. They sold much of it in the fall, ahead of the expected decline following the holidays, so there is little excess inventory now.
Conversely, frozen bigeye tuna was 20 percent cheaper than in 2011, with a top price of JPY 4,200 per kilogram (USD 55, EUR 43). Bigeye and the cheaper yellowfin have largely replaced bluefin in Japanese supermarkets and conveyer-belt sushi chains. The trend is likely to increase as prices diverge. Bluefin could previously be found in supermarkets and was an occasional treat at home. It is now reserved for high-end sushi shops, with retail sales focused on the New Year celebration. Light-fleshed tuna, including previously frozen albacore and yellowfin, was advertised in Osaka supermarket flyers at JPY 198 to 398 per 100 grams, while red-fleshed bigeye ran JPY 398 to 498.
Supply of Marine Steward Council (MSC)-certified skipjack is set to increase. Preliminary approval was granted on 12 December by an independent adjudicator for free schooling skipjack tuna caught in waters of eight Pacific countries grouped under the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), whose members are the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. The countries plan to put out their own brand of tuna to emphasize the MSC certification.
Nearby, a two-year ban on purse-seine tuna fishing in Pacific Ocean high-sea pockets has been extended for three months after a meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission was delayed. The WCPFC imposed a two-year fishing ban at the start of 2010 in two pockets of the high seas in the western and eastern Pacific. The western pocket covers Palau, FSM, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
Many tuna fishing companies operate out of nearby General Santos City in the Philippines and that country plans to push for lifting the ban. The Tuna Canners Association of the Philippines has reported that the country’s tuna production dropped by 20 percent in the first three quarters of 2011 as a result of the continuing fishing ban and 2,000 workers from tuna processors in General Santos losing their jobs.
