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HOW Sushi Went Global ]

under entirely different auspices, utilizing neither gains, and target market prices developed by Japan-
local skills nor traditional technology. The Cartagena ese technicians and fishery scientists.
farms rely on French purse seiners to tow captured These "Spanish" farms compete with operations
tuna to their pens, where joint ventures between throughout the Mediterranean that rely on similar
Japanese trading firms and large-scale Spanish fishing high-tech, high-capital approaches to the fish business.
companies have set up farms using the latest in Japan- In the Adriatic Sea, for example, Croatia is emerging
ese fishing technology. The waters and the workers are as a formidable tuna producer. In Croatia's case, the
Spanish, but almost everything else is part of a glob- technology and the capital were transplanted by emi-
al flow of techniques and capital: financing from gre Croatians who returned to the country from Aus-
major Japanese trading companies; Japanese vessels tralia after Croatia achieved independence from
to tend the nets; aquacultural techniques developed in Yugoslavia in 1991. Australia, for its part, has devel-
Australia; vitamin supplements from European phar- oped a major aquacultural industry for southern
maceutical giants packed into frozen herring from bluefin tuna, a species closely related to the Atlantic
Holland to be heaved over the gunwales for the tuna; bluefin of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean and
plus computer models of feeding schedules, weight almost equally desired in Japanese markets.

To~'sPantry auction houses sell several Given the sheer volume of
J J
hundred (some days sever- global trade, Tsukiji effectively
, sukiji, Tokyo's massive a1 thousand) tuna. Successful sets the world's tuna prices. Last
wholesale seafood mar- buyers whip out their cellphones, time I checked, the record price
ket, is the center of the calling chefs to tell them what was over $200,000 for a partic-
global trade in tuna. Here, they've got. Meanwhile, faxes ularly spectacular fish from
60,000 traders come each day to with critical information on Turkey-a sale noteworthy
buy and sell seafood for Tokyo's prices and other market condi- enough to make the front pages
27 million mouths, moving more tions alert fishers in distant ports of Tokyo's daily papers. But
than 2.4 million kilograms of it in to the results of Tsukiji's morn- spectacular prices are just the tip
less than 12 hours. Boosters ing auctions. In return, Tsukiji is of Tsukiji's influence. The auc-
encourage the homey view that fed a constant supply of infor- tion system and the commodity
Tsukiji is Tokyo no daidokoro- mation on tuna conditions off chains that flow in and out of the
Tokyo's pantry-but it is a Montauk, Cape Cod, Cartagena, market integrate fishers, firms,
pantry where almost $6 billion Barbate, and scores of other fish- and restaurants worldwide in a
worth of fish change hands each ing grounds around the world. complex network of local and
year. New York City's Fulton Tsukiji is the command post translocal economies.
Fish Market, the largest market for a global seafood trade. In As an undisputed hub of the
in North America, handles only value, foreign seafood far fishing world, Tsukiji creates
about $1 billion worth, and only exceeds domestic Japanese prod- and deploys enormous amounts
about 13 percent of the tonnage ucts on the auction block. (Tsuk- of Japanese cultural capital
of Tsukiji's catch. iji traders joke that Japan's lead- around the world. Its control
Tuna are sold at a "moving ing fishing port is Tokyo's Narita of information, its enormous
auction." The auctioneer, International Airport.) .On Tsuk- role in orchestrating and
flanked by assistants who record iji's slippery auction floor, tuna responding to Japanese culinary
prices and fill out invoice slips at from Massachusetts may sell at tastes, and its almost hegemon-
lightning speed, strides across auction for over $30,000 apiece, ic definitions of supply and
the floor just above rows and near octopus from Senegal, eel demand allow it the unassail-
rows of fish, moving quickly from Guangzhou, crab from able privilege of imposing its
from one footstool to the next Sakhalin, salmon from British own standards of quality-stan-
without missing a beat, or a bid. Columbia and Hokkaido, snap- dards that producers worldwide
In little more than half an hour, per from Kyushu, and abalone must heed.
teams of auctioneers from five from California. -7: C.B.