Looking at Japanese tuna landings of both fresh and frozen, for all tuna species which were landed by domestic tuna vessels at local ports, we can see a decrease of 16% from 209.564 M/T to 175.746 M/T during the first half of 2007. Both fresh and frozen tuna marked a cutback during the first two quarters of this year.
The total fresh catch fell by 9.195 M/T from 49.953 M/T or 19%, with albacore, yellowfin and bigeye all showing disappointing landings. The quantity of fresh albacore dropped by 78%, which represented the largest decrease within the Japanese fresh tuna.
However, contrary to the other species, chilled bluefin marked a major increase of 69% in caught volume. Skipjack was the other tuna which volume went up by 41%. These rises were the result of more intensified fishing efforts in the Japanese coastal waters; the higher skipjack catches.
Frozen product jumped down by 24.628 M/T from 159.611 M/T, which equaled a 15% boost. Domestic catches of yellowfin went down by 61%, which was a lot more than the other species.
Frozen albacore receipts jumped six times from 1.091 M/T to 7.919 M/T but still this amount was far from 16.236 M/T, the biggest quantity over the last four years, which was recorded during the season January-June 2004.
