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No.15 A Bluefin Tuna Farm in Kushimoto on the southern Kii Peninsula. |
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No.15 A Bluefin Tuna Farm in Kushimoto on the southern Kii Peninsula. |
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The bluefin tuna I had longed to see did not budge an inch. His gigantic bodies of more than 100 kilograms, passed right in front of my eyes like a missile. |
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"Hey, tuna, wait!" I dip the tuna placed in front of me in the soy
sauce and throw it into my mouth. The melting fatty tuna and the
vinegar rice mix inside my mouth and become intermingled with the soy
sauce. A sigh escapes my nose. "Oh, I can't stand it! I am dying to
eat sushi. I want to gorge on fatty tuna."
I am on a small island in the Kingdom of Tonga. I have come to photograph some whales. A month and a half have passed since I left Japan. I am about to lose my sense of most Japanese foods at this point. Under these circumstances, I don't have much confidence that I can write properly about my most favorite food, tuna. But, it has been half a century since I have come to exist upon this earth. I must proceed and write with dignity and self-control. The theme for this issue is tuna, and it is the bluefin tuna, which garners the most respect among the tuna family of fish. The proper Japanese name is 'kuro maguro' or 'hon maguro'. In English, it is called the bluefin tuna and mainly inhabits the temperate and subtropical zones of the Northern Hemisphere. By the way, we Japanese love tuna. About 300 thousand tons a year enter Japan. This is approximately one third of the entire worldwide haul. If you venture down to the quay along the Sumida River in the Tsukiji Fish Market before dawn, the frozen tuna are packed together. The cold air becomes mist and covers the market floor. More tunas than you can count are brought in. When you see the tuna section, which occupies such a large area of this huge market, you come to understand how important this fish is to the market as a whole. It is quite natural for people to attempt breeding such an important fish. This fish however, is not so easily bred. It lives in the open seas and is on the move all year round in the vast oceans. It is not inappropriate to call the tuna the most wild of fish. To breed this ocean fish in the confines of a net must have been full of large obstacles. About 20 years ago in St. Margaret Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, I had the opportunity to dive into breeding net for bluefin tuna. The fish were extremely large bluefin tuna weighing upwards of 500kgs. They caught large bluefin tuna migrating along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, and bred them and stored them in large netted enclosures. When the price for tuna reached a high in the Japanese market, they put the tuna into coffin like containers with ice and sent them off to Japan by air. When the giant bluefin appeared before my eyes in the transparent waters of the net, I remember flinching even though I thought I had prepared myself for the encounter. In Japan, Kinki University has a long history of having bred the bluefin tuna in the Sea of Kushimoto off the tip of the Kii Peninsula. I asked for permission to dive into the breeding enclosure for the tuna at the fisheries institute at Kinki University. I had our boat brought alongside the enclosure, on Oshima Island which is right off of the village of Kushimoto. As I was preparing my cameras, the bluefins were swimming around swiftly and exposing their fins on the surface of the water. I was informed that there were roughly 30 bluefin tunas larger than 150kgs in the enclosure. Compared to the bluefin tuna in Nova Scotia, the tuna in Kushimoto were mere children. I dived into the enclosure seizing hold of a rope. The underwater transparency was unexpectedly high and I had 14-15 meters of visibility. I was lying low on the bottom so that I would not surprise the fish. The tuna with their fearless looks came close to me one after another. They seemed to have unfathomable power. With their fins nearly still, they passed by me like missiles. They did not posses the servility of domesticated creatures but had wildness about them. 
What beauty. It is the endless desire of man to tame even the wild spirit of the bluefin tuna. I swore to myself that I would always remember their strength and beauty whenever I eat 'maguro'. |
| St. Margaret Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada. |
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