Corporate executive chef Marc Lupino won the inaugural catch himself a few years ago, when he traveled to remote Cordova, Alaska, for the “first fish” of the coveted Copper River kings. Ocean 44 takes it a step further for a fleeting season each year, overnighting Copper River salmon – known as the “Wagyu of seafood” – to the restaurant. He passionately describes the power consumer habit plays in the problem and offers alternatives to tuna consumption in a sustainable sushi bar he jointly runs.Most seafood restaurants claim Alaska as the provenance of their salmon. Trenor argues that the effects of overfishing the bluefin tuna, which take years to mature to the size ideal for catch, far outweigh the rewards. The most fervent representative of the conservation cause here may be Casson Trenor, a San Francisco-based restaurateur and self-described sustainability expert. Individuals and organizations concerned about the problem seem to agree on its magnitude but not a solution, so they take several different approaches, including aggressive protests of illegal fishing vessels and appeals to regulatory bodies. Although The Global Catch initially considers sushi broadly, it takes the food's ubiquity for granted, merely glancing at its role in the culture and its global culinary influence as it speeds toward its essential focus: conservation.
Outlining the process that brings tuna from the boat to the plate is just one of the building blocks of the film's larger argument about the economic and environmental impact of the sushi industry. The film argues for sustainable sushi bars that offer tuna alternatives in their rolls. Sushi's popularity has led to a serious decline in tuna populations around the world. "When people think of sushi, they think of tuna," says Mamoru Sugiyama, a Michelin-starred chef at a Tokyo sushi restaurant. In Russia, Brazil and China, the popularity of sushi in recent years has translated to more and more orders for tuna.
The film visits sushi restaurants not only in Tokyo, but in Poland, San Francisco and even Austin, Texas, where students and parents at a local high school football game can pick up some sushi at the concession stand. A single Pacific bluefin tuna regularly sells at auction for more than $100,000 and, more significantly, global demand for it continues to grow, fueled by the expanding international taste for sushi. The message is clear: In Japan, tuna means big business.Īs The Global Catch outlines after a cursory introduction to the history of sushi and its preparation, that business is thriving.
Yet it offers a few striking images that speak for themselves: a commercial fishing vessel netting thousands of pounds of bluefin tuna, buyers for clients all over the world inspecting hundreds of tuna laid out in Tokyo's Tsukiji Market, a statue in the small fishing town of Oma depicting a large bluefin rising from the waves and, opposite, a pair of fists advancing to meet it.
Sushi: The Global Catch, a shrewdly constructed documentary on the challenges of the modern sushi industry, functions like a densely packed information delivery system - heavy on content, spare on style.
0 kommentar(er)
