Tuna Express: Morehead City To Japan In 48 Hoursff

Caught bluefin are generally taken to two locations in Morehead City, where fish exporters vie to buy the fish.

When a tuna is taken aboard a boat, it is usually put into a body bag, and ice is packed around it and into its cavities. One bag spotted recently had dollar signs on it.

At Portside Marina, Donald Diehl, a tuna buyer with True World Foods, took in 21 tunas on the best day of the year so far.

Diehl said for 5,700 pounds of tuna, about $78,000 went back to the fishermen - for an average of $13.70 per pound. He said the fishermen get 60 to 70 percent of the profits, while he and other middlemen keep the rest.

Although bluefin tuna bring big money, sale prices are often exaggerated.

One fish six years ago sold for $173,600 after auctioneers got into a bidding war, but tunas selling for even $50,000 are extremely rare.

Many of the commercial anglers around Morehead City say the most they've ever received for a single bluefin is about $6,000, which means the fish sold for roughly $10,000 on the market.

Almost 90 percent of bluefin is shipped to Japan. “The domestic market is not going to pay that price for a fish,” Diehl said.

The fish are unloaded at the docks using pulleys and forklifts. Buyers inspect the fish and cut off the head, fins and tail. A cross section of the tail is usually looked at very closely for oil content. An oily fish will get more money on the market because the bluefin’s fatty belly meat is what Japanese sushi connoisseurs prize the most.

From the cutting table, the fish are loaded onto a stretcher supported by a forklift and then lowered into large plastic tanks - 4-foot cubes full of ice and water.

The tanks are loaded onto trucks, driven to Raleigh-Durham International Airport and loaded onto FedEx planes bound for Tokyo. In days, generally within 48 hours, they will be up for auction at the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest in the world.

Source: Written by Javier Serna, The News Observer