A man named Tadashi Yamagata—vice chairman of Japan’s national union of sushi chefs—is quoted as saying: “Sushi without tuna just would not be sushi.”
This, of course, is bullshit, as you’ll know if you’ve read The Zen of Fish. Until midway through the 20th century, most Japanese considered tuna a garbage fish, unfit for sushi. Lean, light-fleshed fish like sea bream and flounder were the kings of sushi, not tuna.
Nowadays, the Japanese go apoplectic every time regulators try to limit tuna fishing, claiming that it’s a threat to their traditional culture. This is more bullshit, stirred up by fishing industry lobbyists. (Carl Safina’s book Song for the Blue Ocean describes some especially revealing moments in international tuna negotiations. [To listen to Carl discuss the issue of disappearing tuna on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show, click here.])
A moratorium on tuna sushi wouldn’t bother me a bit. In this age of mass production and globalized distribution, most raw tuna doesn’t taste like anything anymore—in fact, check out this very perceptive article on the demise of tasty tuna by Todd Kliman in Washingtonian magazine.
There are much more interesting fish to eat in sushi, many of which are aren’t threatened the way tuna populations are. Ask your local sushi chef for recommendations.
[P.S.: Check out the subsequent Op-Ed article I wrote in the New York Times on the problem of sushi and disappearing tuna.]
