
'More fat, more flavour': Why PEI tuna is selling at its highest price in decades
CBC
About a third of the way through Prince Edward Island's bluefin tuna season, fishing crews are reeling in some of the fattiest tuna and highest prices they've seen in decades.
"We're seeing prices range from $10 or $11 on the low side to $40, $50, $60 a pound on the high side. So these are higher prices than we've seen, probably since the early 90s," said Jason Tompkins, owner of TNT Tuna in North Lake, which buys and exports about three-quarters of Canada's bluefin tuna quota.
Tompkins says in a normal season, just "one or two" of the roughly 1,500 tuna caught off the northeast coast of P.E.I. will earn the boat more than $10,000, after being sold on high-end markets around North America, Europe and Japan.
So far this year?
"We've had probably 14 or 15 fish that have returned over $10,000," he said. With each boat getting two or three tags allowing them to catch that number of fish each season, "that's $20,000 or $30,000 for a few days' work. So it's really nice to see returns like that come back."
The key to those high returns? The all-tuna-can-eat buffet in the waters off Canada's smallest province.
Bluefin tuna feast on herring and mackerel. A couple years ago, facing depleting stocks, Fisheries and Oceans Canada banned commercial bait fishing for herring in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and for mackerel in waters across Atlantic Canada and off Quebec.
The tuna have taken full advantage.
"For the first two months of the season, we've had some of the only fatty tuna in the world," said Tompkins. "Fat is flavour, no different than beef. So the more fat, the more flavour. The more flavour, the higher the price.
"And we've had pretty much the high price in Japan every night for the last six weeks."
Japan is the other key to this season's success.
That sushi-loving country has long been the biggest buyer of P.E.I. tuna, though the COVID-19 pandemic cut into markets for a while.
Finally, Japan's economy and tourism industry are rebounding, along with the demand for high-quality tuna.
"The Japanese market is helping for sure," Glen Doucette said Friday from the wharf in Naufrage, after catching a tuna weighing in at 450 pounds, or 204 kilograms.