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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 12
August 2005
Campbell’s penchant for detail makes bluefin tuna quality analysis possible
SEABROOK, NH - Bob Campbell is a self-described “pack rat,” someone who never throws anything away. That trait recently proved to be a godsend for researchers trying to document a perceived decline in bluefin tuna quality. (see related story here).
Campbell, who is now the manager of the Yankee Fishermen’s Co-op here, has been grading tuna for a good part of his career. He started off in the fishing business as a trip gillnetter back in the late 1970s. By 1991, however, he was looking for a change.
“At first we’d make money in the spring and fall and in the summer we’d chase tuna,” he said of gillnetting. “At the end, we were mostly making six- to seven-day trips in the wintertime. It was not where I wanted to be.”
Tri-Coastal Fishermen’s Co-op in Newburyport, MA was hiring and Campbell got the job. In addition to groundfish and scallops, bluefin was big at Tri-Coastal and, during 1991 and 1992, Campbell was paired with Ryozo Moriwaka of the Toichi auction house in Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market to learn how to grade the big fish.
“We were like conjoined twins,” he recalled. “Even while I was training I kept records. It was part of my training.”
Moriwaka is now the general manager of Toichi and Campbell now has been running the Seabrook co-op for eight years. The two maintain a close working relationship.
Grading
While the Yankee co-op helps fishermen sell early fish, once the season gets going, it sponsors a silent auction where buyers can compete for bluefin landed there.
In his role as co-op manager – the guy responsible for keeping everything “on the up and up” – Campbell continues to grade all the fish that come in the door.
“When it comes time for the fisherman to decide what to do, I give them information on the market and on what I think about the fish,” he said.
In addition to freshness, meat color, fat and oil content, and the shape of the fish, Campbell also keeps detailed notes on injuries, disease, meat burn, and other observations.
“I like making comparisons from year to year,” he said. “I never thought it would be used like it was this year (in the study). I think it’s great.”
Campbell, along with a number of dealers, had been increasingly concerned that it was no longer just early fish that were showing no fat.
“The fish we were seeing at the end of September looked like fish we’d expect to get in the first part of July,” he said. “I never realized until I saw it on paper how dramatic a change it has been. It’s not like something that hits you on the head. It came on gradually until it became the norm.”
One gift
Campbell said he wished that the kind of research that his records made possible had been going on 20 years ago, “when the fishing was good and everything was going fine.” Still, he’s glad it’s happening now.
“It’s been great working with them,” he said of the scientists from the University of New Hampshire’s Large Pelagics Research Lab. “We give, they take, and then they give us back information. It’s a perfect fit.”
So now that he’s provided important detailed bluefin records for analysis, does Campbell have any other treasure troves for the research community to mine?
“No,” he laughed. “That’s my one gift to the industry.”
Lorelei Stevens
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