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Fresh pacific saury at the market (Photo: Stockfile)
Pacific saury August price is the highest ever
JAPAN
Monday, September 14, 2020, 06:00 (GMT + 9)
Last month's saury trading price exceeded 1,300 yen per kilo due to record poor fishing, nearly doubling last year, a record high.
According to the "Fishery Information Service Center" created by prefectures and fishermen's organizations, the catch of Pacific saury nationwide last month was 166 tons in preliminary figures.
The catch in August, on a normal season, exceeded 8800 tonnes for adults, but fell sharply to 911 tonnes last year.
This year's 166 tons was only 18% last year, the lowest ever.
NHK journalists showing drop in August catches from 2018 (Photo: NHK video)
Due to the shortage of saury, the price of saury has risen sharply, and the average price per kilogram traded at the main ports where it was landed exceeded 1000 yen for the first time in the record, reaching 1343 yen.
The price in August is 4.3 times that of two years ago and 1.9 times that of last year.
Every year, saury prices are highest in August, when the season begins, and tend to fall after the autumn, when catches increase.
Future prices will depend on the catch, but the Fisheries Agency estimates that the amount of saury coming to the waters near Japan from Hokkaido to Ibaraki will be extremely low.
Intensive fishing of saury has increasingly taken place in international waters prior to fish starting their southward migration along Japan’s coastline. Schools have also tended to follow routes further away from Japan.(Source: Nippon.com)
Regarding this cause, the Fisheries Agency said that the habitat of saury has changed due to changes in the environment such as the flow of tides moving southward to the east of Japan moving away from Japan, and the increase in sardines and mackerels in which saury and food compete. I'm giving.
Many of the saury of this year are small, and some fresh fish stores do not sell them.
In Tokyo, there are stores that sell saury for 780 yen or 980 yen, and while the prices are soaring, there are also stores that suspend purchasing.
At the large fish shop "Sakanaya Shun" in Nerima Ward, a large amount of saury was procured at this time of year, and although the amount was small last year when it was unfished, it has been on sale since August. Is short and often small, so I haven't purchased it yet.
"Sakanaya Shun" store manager, Hiroshi Watanabe (Photo: NHK video)
The store manager, Hiroshi Watanabe, said, "If the autumn breeze blows, I want to eat saury. I want to sell it because the sales floor is lively, but there is no big saury that we can see. The price is high, and saury becomes a high-class fish as it is. I feel lonely because it seems to be. "
A male customer who visited the store said, "I want to eat saury, but I bought mackerel. I want the price of saury to return to the old price of about 200 yen per fish."
A female customer said, "Saury is an autumn food, so I want to eat it early. It's so expensive that I can't reach it at other stores yet."
Some restaurants have been forced to change their signature menus during this period due to the record poor catch of saury.
The set meal chain "Ootoya" has been offering "charcoal-grilled raw saury set meals" only from September to October every year, but due to record poor fishing, the amount offered at 336 stores nationwide It means that it is no longer possible to secure.
Therefore, we will change the seasonal menu to "Horse mackerel fried set meal" and sell it from the 11th as "pacific saury is not good but fight with horse mackerel".
Shuhei Koide, general manager of the product development department of Ootoya (Photo: NHK video)
Shuhei Koide, general manager of the product development department of Ootoya, said, "Since there is no way to increase the catch of saury, we changed to fried horse mackerel from Nagasaki, which is fresh and greasy. I want to sell a set meal of saury as soon as I start catching it. "
Source: NHK
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