I also made it to Mitsuwa on Sunday to witness the disassembly of the same magnificent fish Mike Sula has written about. My almost indecent enthusiasm for bluefin sashimi is, like his, colored somewhat by my understanding of the species’s dire circumstances, so I’ve done a little research to attempt to reassure myself that I wasn’t party to a bioethical atrocity.
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First, this was a Mediterranean-caught tuna. It is legal to fish for bluefin in the Mediterranean, provided that strict quotas are observed. Second, the fish was six or seven years old, which means that it was well past sexual maturity–Mediterranean fish develop much faster than Northern or Pacific bluefin, and almost always begin spawning by four years of age (PDF). This may seem like a trivial point, but the quickest way to crash the population of a slow-growing apex predator like the bluefin is to catch and kill the fish before they can reproduce.
Here’s a good view of the fish’s bone structure. You can also see some of the strikingly yellow caudal finlets.
