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THE R E A L F I S H
"There's a fish!" Probably what most people think when they see a tuna for the first time. That's what the literary scholars in China must have thought when they combined the character for fish éš with the character 有 meaning "there is" to create the character for tuna 鮪! In Japan, a nation of Hemingways when it comes to the worship of the King of Fish, I too have been swept up in this nation's tuna obsession. This is my homage to tuna - or Maguro as they say in Japan.
Meet the 'Real Deal' Gang
There are 15 species in the Tribe Thunnini, and of those there are 8 species known as the "true tunas" in the genus Thunnus. Within that, there is the Big Five and their territory covers all five oceans. Tribes, true tunas, big five, five oceans... starting to sound like a gang to me - so let's meet them!
The Muscle
4.53 meters
LENGTH
680 kilograms
WEIGHT
>30,000 Slices
SASHIMI
Pacific Northern Bluefin
The Old Timer
43 years
OLD
Chilled
BEHAVIOUR
Chesty
MORE RIBS
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Atlantic Northern Bluefin
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Money Bags
$3.1 million
DOLLARS
$1,328
PER SASHIMI SLICE
$20,000
DOESN'T GET OF WATER FOR LESS
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Southern Bluefin
The Lover
Beautiful Big
EYES
Loves
THE MOONLIGHT
Hates
LATIN NAME "OBESUS", MAKES HIM SOUND FAT
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Bigeye
The Rebel
Lives Hard
DIES YOUNG
Fights
THE LONGEST
Ripped
LEANEST OF THE BIG BOYS
Yellowfin
The Foot Soldiers
"Knuckle Dragger"
Albacore
Longest
PECTORAL FINS
"Nappies"
Longtail
No
(SWIM) BLADDER
"Black Sheep"
Blackfin
Mongrel
HYBRID-LIKE QUALITIES
The Gang's RAP sheet..
The gang often gets speeding tickets. Especially Rebel the Yellowfin...
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Rebel got clocked doing...
76km/hr
in a 60 zone!
In her court hearing Rebel told the judge "we have to be fast, in fact tuna need to swim at one body length per second just to breath". So this means that...
Muscles here needs to swim at..
4.5 m/s just to stay alive!
(meters per second)
The gang are also the richest in the five oceans - especially Moneybags! Her belly, and the belly of the other two bluefins, Muscles and the Old Timer, at retail can be worth....
$600/kg
But it wasn't always this way. The bluefins used to be low ranks. In fact Moneybags, Muscles, and the Old Timer's bellies...
Used to be fed to these guys!
It's true. I heard it from the horses mouth in Tokyo from an old boy sushi chef who did it himself back in the 50s. The crazy thing is, the stuff we put in tins and feed to cats now, the breakaway Katsuwomus' gang leader Pelamis, AKA
Skipjack Tuna
"Skippy"
Commoner
60% OF TUNA CATCH
Tinny
MOSTLY PUT IN CANS
Flakey
DRIED AND SHAVED INTO FLAKES
Used to be the most expensive fish in the sea!
In feudal Japan, lords in Kyoto would pay fortunes for this highly perishable fish to be brought in-land from the coast.
Hooked on tuna
Perhaps there is no other group of fish that has captured us like we have captured them. Socially, culutrally and economically our species have been and are entangled with tuna, like they are entangled by us.
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In Japan they are the kings of fish and the reverence the Japanese have for tuna has resonated with me since I first went there in 1993. Now I want to share that with as many people as I can. To understand brings respect, to respect brings the desire to conserve. That is my mission with this site.