Sushi Otaku

According to a recent World Wildlife Fund report, tuna stocks worldwide are at risk of depletion due to overfishing. Could this mean no more maguro and toro for sushi fans? Currently, tuna fleet capacity is far greater than required to catch a sustainable level of the fish. This, coupled with disputes over allocation of fishing quotas, and plain old illegal fishing have led to overfishing of one of our favorite sushi items. The Atlantic bluefin tuna is severely overfished and the spawning stock of the Southern bluefin is now down almost 90%.

In addition to poaching, there appears to be deliberate misreporting of catches and even “tuna laundering” which is hiding the actual number of tuna caught. Some tuna catches are apparently being processed at sea before being transferred to larger ships headed for Japan, effectively shielding the poachers from law enforcement officials and flouting quota management.

While the best way to save the species from total collapse would be a grassroots tuna protest or an embargo on maguro and toro, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that it won’t happen that way. Too many people care too much about eating their tuna to give it up and make a point. We do, however, need to let the world know that sustainable fishing must be enforced to save the tuna from going the way of the dodo. Unlike some fish, such as hamachi (yellowtail) no one has yet to find a way to farm tuna, leaving sustainable fishing our only option.

Fleets from the European Union (mainly France), Libya and Turkey appear to be the main offenders, according to the report. The 42 nation International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas — in which the European Union plays a major role — is responsible for regulating the fishing quotas. That said, the annual quota of 32,000 tons, set by ICCAT, was broken by over 40 percent in 2004 with a catch of 44,948 tons, and rose to 45,547 in 2005. The actual catches are likely to be well over 50,000 tons — a figure confirmed by the ICCAT scientific committee. Without adherence to international quotas, we may not have enough tuna left in a few years to have even a sustainable breeding population, let alone chutoro for our plate. Joe Borg, European Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, is being urged to step up to the plate and close the fisheries that are putting the bluefin tuna at risk. We will just have to see how strongly he feels about maintaining the stability of the world’s bluefin tuna stocks at the next ICCAT meeting in November. Hopefully for the sushi fans of the world, we will see some action soon. If things work out, your otoro may be a little more expensive than it has been, but at least it won’t be going away forever, and that’s something I can support.

Meshi agare!
Warren
The sushi guy.

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This is a question I get asked a lot. I have always been pretty conservative in answering for a variety of reasons, mostly because there *are* risks to eating raw foods for anyone, especially during pregnancy, and since I am not a doctor, I don’t want my musings interpreted as medical advice. That said, there are also reasons why I think pregnant women might want to eat sushi.

Seafood is good for you. Seafood is great for developing babies. The fatty acids found in seafood (Omega-3 fatty acids) are pretty much a requirement for growing babies, which means that women who are pregnant or breastfeeding should be consuming omega-3 fatty acids. And we generally don’t get enough of them in our diet. A new study in the British journal Lancet found, after analyzing data from approximately 9,000 British mothers and their children over an eight-year period, that pregnant women who ate less than 12 ounces of seafood a week did not protect their children from adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. Limiting seafood during pregnancy can actually be a detriment to the developing baby. The study found that limiting seafood actually increased the child’s risk of poor verbal IQ development compared with mothers who ate more than 12 ounces of seafood per week. Those children were also at greater risk of poor social development and poor motor control. Not getting enough of the proper nutrients is obviously quite a detriment to a developing child.

In North America, doctors often suggest that pregnant women refrain from eating sushi due to the risks of parasitic and bacterial contamination. The problem is not always that the particular item you are eating might be bad, but also one of cross contamination. Any contaminated food that is cut with the same knife which is then used for your item, or placed on the same surface as your California roll, will cause your item to become contaminated. My wife and I struggled with this issue during her pregnancies and found two solutions. She only ate the cooked items and the first solution was to simply ask the itamae to use a clean knife and a different surface to make her rolls than the others. We are regulars at our favorite restaurant and were comfortable asking him, and when told she was pregnant, he was happy to oblige our request. We ate sushi a lot during her pregnancies

Our second solution was to make sushi at home. This may seem a bit intimidating to some, but is surprisingly fun and easy. In fact, you can find detailed instructions to make sushi at home at my How to Make Sushi at Home section of The Sushi FAQ. If you are making the sushi yourself, you should have pretty good control over the sanitary conditions, but unless you are sure of the surface and knife used to make your food, you may not be any safer eating California roll in a restaurant than eating the raw tuna.

For those interested in eating sushi when pregnant, California rolls are an excellent choice, as are other cooked items such as unagi maki (eel rolls), and the various tempura rolls that are often offered (e.g. shrimp tempura roll). If you are making sushi at home, your options expand greatly and you can make any kind of roll you want, for example, cooking salmon and making you own cooked salmon and avocado rolls (quite good, especially when still warm). Use your imagination and there are a number of great sushi items to pick from. My only other advice for pregnant women would be to avoid the larger predatory fish, such as swordfish, shark, and tilefish, as some contaminants, such as mercury, concentrate as they move up the food chain. But with sensible decisions, the sushi world is your oyster.

Meshi agare!
Warren
The sushi guy

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