Why 4 Of The World's Priciest Seafoods Are So Expensive | So Expensive Food | Business Insider

it's crazy how these are considered nowadays as some of the "world's most expensive seafoods". all of these excluding the barnacles were everywhere when i was a child where i grew up (the tropics in southeast asia). you can practically harvest them yourselves for free. fast forward 2 decades later living in california, now reminiscing those good old childhood days of mine. just goes to show there's a lot of things in our life that shouldn't be taken granted for.

For anyone unaware, barnacles are extremely sharp and hard. In coastal towns it's drilled into your head from a young age that if you get sucked out to sea NEVER grab onto a pier because the barnacles will literally tear your body to shreds, like getting put through a grater. Imagine getting raked along a strip of jagged and sharp rocks repeatedly, that's why harvesting them is so dangerous.

I love how Japanese culture take pride in every skill. The eel grill guy said it takes a lifetime to master the grill. Very humble.

Taking both claws seems cruel to me. How are they supposed to eat or defend themselves with no claws

What a lot of people don’t know, recreational harvesting for Stone crab you can only keep one claw in most areas so that way they can still get food, I’ve been harvesting them and they tend to grow claws back in a year or 2, commercial is a little different

Sea urchins and eels are cautionary tails where I am from. Here in Maine in the 80's we had beaches covered in green urchins. You could walk along the beach and find them. In tidal rocks you'd find them so thick you couldn't see the rock. Glass eels could be seen in many rivers. They looked like worms crawling through a river next to rocks. I would catch adults when fishing all the time. Fast forward to the late 90s and the urchins are gone from beaches. I haven't even seen a shell on a beach in years. The fishery collapsed and because of invasive crab species it is likely to never rebound. The elver (glass eels) are still fished but only because of strict regulations of the fishery and restoration of habitats. Stocks of eel are dangerously depleted and the fishing doesn't stop. The Gulf of Maine is being over fished year over year. No one person or industry is to blame. The fisheries can't sustain the relentless fishing. I love seafood but almost never eat it because it is no longer ethical. Urchins, eel, shrimp and scallops these fisheries have collapsed or are being driven further into deep water to maintain the catch. Lobster is being over fished the warning signs are all there yet there is no will to slow the damage. We've got to be better at regulating fisheries or we will kill the oceans and ourselves.

if you ever see unagi at a Japanese restaurant i highly, highly recommend giving it a try! it’s not always this expensive. the meat is oily and fatty, with a softer grain than regular fish, and a rich almost pungent flavor. it’s not for everyone but personally it is my favorite fish.

For some background on the sea urchin situation: they’re absolutely invasive, particularly in kelp forests off the coast of California. When people hunted sea otters to the brink of extinction from the 1700s to the early 1900s, urchins lost their primary natural predator. The otter population has since recovered, in what is nothing short of a miracle, but there still aren’t enough otters to make up for the sheer number of urchins that have been running (crawling) around, unchecked. Then, a few years ago, sea star wasting disease hit the west coast of the U.S. really hard, and the urchin population was once again able to explode. The truly vicious part of this cycle is that urchins over-consume kelp, but in the absence of kelp, urchins can still subsist on other food. However, as the video mentioned, urchins that didn’t grow up eating kelp are not always of suitable grade for consumption. So, we either need to lower our standards for urchin consumption, find another economically viable use for subpar gonads, or do some wide scale manual removal.

Stone crab harvesting is a dark comedy. It’s like if a dude did bodybuilding to have bronze arms just to have them ripped off. “Eh, he’ll regenerate.” Okay, but is he supposed to eat with his FEET?!

Some of this eels comes from the Philippines. It cost just 1 usd a piece for export sizes already. One issue why prices in Japan is expensive is that Japanese tends to be strict in quality from fruits to livestocks that are imported. When in fact on tropical countries like Philippines, Indonesia etc some of this you can get for free. In fruits they tend to look in the external appearance more than the actual taste.

I love this series. It teaches me so much about all these seemingly rare things. I’m glad this series exists!

I admire how seriously the workers take their work. Its truly an art.

Dang I feel bad for the stone claw crabs 🥺 just cause they have the ability to regenerate doesn’t mean we should just harvest them and rip them off and leave them to die

It's good to know efforts are being made to prevent over-fishing/harvesting of some of these animals, proper regulation is really critical for the survival of many ecosystems.

Crab caught for the second time: "Oh no.. not again.. you have no idea what i've been through"

@0:19 Japanese Eel . @6:57 Stone Crab Claws. @13:14 Sea Urchins/Gonads. @22:45 Gooseneck Barnacles

The saying the Japanese chef said, just points out how much detail oriented Japan is, everyday they try to make their craft better and better, until the bar gets raised so high

Being a spear fisherman , and just an all around hunt for seafood type a guy. Glad to see one of my favorites " Goose neck barnacles " make the list. I have a secrect place where I can grab as many as I want , 4" tall and as big around as my thumb. Soooo good!!

Your transitions between one seafood and another are fantastic. Just here to say that. 💖

I worked on an urchin boat deck out of Santa Barbara in college. They were plentiful back then. What a shame the kelp forest are being eaten to near nothing. Working off the channel islands was a way better office than anything else I could have done at that time. Long live Sands and Devereux Beaches. Those kelp beds kept the sharks out when we surfed.