With the rise of these unclassifiable hybrids, fishermen and fish traders are having to discard a sizable share of their catch. To avoid accidental poisonings, Japan prohibits their sale and distribution.

The problem is that they can be hard to distinguish from established species. Hybrids are no more dangerous than your average lethal pufferfish. With pufferfish heading north to seek cooler waters, sibling species of the fish have begun to inter-breed, triggering a sudden increase in the number of hybrid fish. When a supermarket in western Japan accidentally sold five packets of the fish without its poisonous liver removed in January, the town used its missile alert system to warn residents.Īnd now, climate change is adding a new element of risk: Fishermen are discovering an unprecedented number of hybrid species in their catch as seas surrounding the archipelago – particularly off the northeastern coast – see some of the fastest rates of warming in the world. News of poisonings elicits fevered national coverage. A kilogram fetches as much as 30,000 yen at the market here, and in the December holiday season, when fugu is particularly popular, a luxury fishmonger in Tokyo can sell up to $88,000 worth of the fish on any given day. The furtive bidding, a relic of a time when fish traders wore kimonos whose sleeves obscured their hands as they signaled their bids, is part of the insular world of Japanese pufferfish, or fugu, a fish best known for its ability to kill a person in as little as a few hours.Īlthough deaths are extremely rare, the whiff of danger associated with the fish’s poison is a significant element of the delicacy’s enduring allure in Japanese culture.

Japanese fugu