Chris Loew

An underreporting scandal is tarnishing the reputation of Japan’s most highly-regarded regional bluefin tuna brand, and prompting a call for improved traceability.

Two fishery company presidents were arrested on 7 February, 2023, in the port town of Oma in Aomori Prefecture for allegedly failing to report catches of bluefin tuna to the prefectural government.

Tadaaki Nitta and Kazumi Sasaki, the presidents of Uochu and Saihoku Suisan,

Maruha Nichiro, the world's largest seafood company, reported its highest-ever sales and operating profit for the nine month period from April through December.

In its 6 February filing, the Tokyo-based company said that it grew net sales by 18 percent, from JPY 661.2 billion (USD 4.8 billion, EUR 4.5 billion) in the same period of 2021 to JPY 781 billion (USD 5.7 billion, EUR 5.4 billion) in 2022, while operating income rose by 20.4 percent,

Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) Director for Japan and South Korea Johan Kvalheim talked to SeafoodSource about two campaigns for airflown fish he has been involved in since he took up the post in December of 2020. For airflown mackerel, the NSC worked with the Tokyo-based importer, JALUX, in a campaign called “Mackerel Nouveau,” a play on the fresh Beaujolais Nouveau wine so popular in Japan. Additionally, the Aeon supermarket chain

At a contentious special session of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), developing nations bucked pressure from the European Union and approved an annual closure period for drifting fish-aggregating devices (dFADs).

The IOTC is the regional fishery management organization (RFMO) that manages tuna fishing in the Indian Ocean. The three-day special session that ended on 5 February was held to consider a conservation and management measure on

After placing new sanctions on Russia, Japan now has to deal with its northern neighbor refusing to schedule annual negotiations for fishing access in territorial waters around the southern Kuril Islands.

Though the two countries recently completed a deal for fishing access for parts of each other’s exclusive economic zones (EEZs), Russia has ruled out any talks on access to waters around the disputed islands so long as Japan continues to

Japan, the world’s largest producer of farmed yellowtail, is lagging behind competing countries in the proportion of its yellowtail seedlings that come from hatchery production. 

The result is that the country's yellowtail producers are reliant on wild-caught fish to populate their farms, and face bigger challenges in producing a steady supply of high-quality fresh product year-round.

In 2012, the Japanese government put a cap on the

The Tokyo-based National Pacific Saury Stick Net Fishery Cooperative announced on 10 January that only 17,910 metric tons (MT) of saury were landed by Japanese vessels in 2022, marking the fourth consecutive year of record lows since statistics started being kept in 1961.

The amount is a two-percent decline from the 18,291 MT caught in 2021, which was down 38 percent from the 29,566 MT caught in 2020, which in turn was down 27 percent from the