Mitsubishi freezing tuna to sell later as stocks plummet toward extinction
By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent Japan’s sprawling Mitsubishi conglomerate has cornered a 40 per cent share of the world market in bluefin tuna, one of the world’s most endangered fish. A corporation within the £170bn Mitsubishi empire is importing thousands of tonnes of the fish from Europe into Tokyo’s premium fish markets, despite stocks plummeting towards extinction in the Mediterranean. Bluefin tuna frozen at -60C now could be sold in several years’ time for astronomical sums if Atlantic bluefin becomes commercially extinct as forecast, a result of the near free-for-all enjoyed by the tuna fleet. In the forthcoming documentary film The End of the Line, Roberto Mielgo, a former bluefin fisherman who travels the world monitoring catches, claims that Mitsubishi buys and sells 60 per cent of the threatened fish and that it has expanded its freezer capacity to hold extra bluefin. … Fish stocks across the world are in retreat because of over-fishing. One study suggests oceans will be stripped clean of all fish by 2048. Bluefin is imminently at risk of commercial extinction. The wildlife charity WWF forecasts that breeding stocks of the fish that migrate from the Atlantic to spawn will be wiped out in the Mediterranean by 2012. Although the legal bluefin catch is set at 22,000 tonnes, conservationists suspect the actual catch is 60,000 tonnes, four times the maximum that marine scientists recommend. After studying catches and sales, Charles Clover, the environmental journalist behind the film The End of the Line, believes that businesses involved in the ransacking are deep-freezing 20,000 tonnes of bluefin a year for later use. …
