Inconvenient truth about sushi: the unagi (eel) you ate might not have actually been eel
As sushi has become a popular cuisine, more and more people are eating it on a regular basis globally. But unfortunately, fish are disappearing from our oceans due to a variety of reasons such as overfishing, environmental degradation and climate change.
Ugani (eels), a popular sushi ingredient, is one of the most drastic examples that is facing a rapid population decrease. It’s so much so that the Japanese Ministry of the Environment listed Japanese unagi as endangered species (1B).
Where do we go from here? Will we see unagi sushi again? Take this opportunity to learn a little bit about eels.
Life Cycle of Eels
Eels are a little bit like salmon as they live on both salt water and freshwater. But they are the opposite of salmons. While salmon lives in the ocean (salt water) and comes back to river (freshwater) to spawn, eels live in rivers but go into the deep sea to spawn. Mom eels travel more than 3,000 miles (from Japanese rivers to the Mariana Trench off of the Philippines) to lay eggs. Once they hatch, the baby eels go through different life stages, and eventually come back to the rivers where their parents used to live. It’s mesmerizing to imagine how a small fish like an eel can make such a long, arduous journey.
Half of the life stage of eels is in the ocean,
and the rest is in the river (on a continent).
Only a small number of species do that.
How do Japanese fishermen catch eels?
Traditionally, Japanese catch silver eels in the river (wild caught) or catch glass eels and grow them (farm raised). However, in both cases you need glass eels to come back to your rivers. Unfortunately, the number of glass eels coming back to Japanese rivers is drastically decreasing.
Japanese Fishermen with permits catching glass eels at the river mouth.
In this place in Kagoshima Prefecture in 2022,
they only caught 1/3 of the 2019 level.
Drastic decrease every year.
Alternative fish disguised as unagi
There is nothing much you can do if you don’t have enough glass eels – unless you can farm raise eels from eggs. It turns out to be very difficult to do it, because eels spawn in the deep ocean in South Asia. No one really knows what baby eels eat, or in what kind of environment they thrive.
For now, the practical solution is to use alternative fish and pretend that it is unagi. By the way, alternative fish is often used to make sushi. If you think you were able to get otherwise expensive ingredients (such as salmon roe) cheap, it’s most likely that they were made using something else.
This sushi looks like s a unagi sushi substitute.
It was cooked using the same process
(grilled with sweet BBQ sauce).
Most likely it’s an alternative fish,
but I cannot tell what it is.
Pangasius as an alternative unagi
One of the most commonly used alternative fish for unagi is pangasius. It is farm raised in South Eastern Asian countries. As it turns out, it is one of the most consumed fish in the United States.
You need to pay attention to “farm raised.” The quality, safety and sustainability of farm raised fish all depends on the method of aquaculture. The quality of the environment/water, food they are provided, etc. There are debates on whether it’s safe to eat pangasius.
So what is the best thing to do? Try to find a real unagi which is disappearing and getting more and more expensive? Or happily accept alternatives, which can be full of safety and sustainability concerns? There is no perfect answer.
But there is one thing that is obvious: sushi used to be an expensive party food. High quality, fresh seafood is difficult to come by and is expensive. It really sums up what our relationships has been with fish. It’s not reasonable to assume that we can always access high quality fish with affordable prices. Overfishing will deplete resources. Malpracticed fish farming will damage environment, and produce contaminated products. We need to make smart choices.
