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.

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

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.

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?!

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.

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

1:34 🤨🤔"Sir what did you call me??"

1:33 My man just called everyone a Cawk Sucker lmao

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

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!!

Just imagine getting captured to have both your arms ripped off and then getting tossed back into the ocean.

Lmao the rock crab guy saying he’s only been “bit” a few times was gold

Damn the crab claws was crazy. Imagine having your arms ripped off and then being thrown back into the ocean

When I lived on the coast about every 5th bite I'd get fishing on the bottom was an eel. I hated hooking them, because they'd twist up on your line tangling everything and get everything slimy! I never ate one, but I have cut them up into chunks and used them for bait in my crab traps and for fishing too. They're tough and you can catch several fish on one chunk.

How is a crab supposed to grab food if both of its claws have been ripped off?

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

Since most eels die before adulthood couldn't they just reintroduce some back into nature? The government could subsidize this so that the farmers wouldn't make a loss.

I remember one time stone crabs were at a buffet in Mexico at my all inclusive and I was shocked but grateful.

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

I mean if a crab has had their claws removed repeatedly, over and over again😢 just eat the whole damn crab!

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

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

the amazing smokiness from the eel comes from the fan under the worker's armpit

Large portion of glass Eels are shipped from Maine in the US to Japan to be raised. The eels swim upstream to lay eggs and then young glass eels hatch and swim back to the ocean.

"these crabs have a mind of their own" you just blew my God damn mind..

0:07 bro that poor crab was alive

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.

My family and I would go fishing and they would catch many eels in a day and grandma would prep and cook them. Now I'm wondering if we were eating our retirements away😂😂

22:22 "This ultimately raises the price of rare, premium, gonads", is a sentence you don't hear every day. 😆

0:27 I am Dutch, and my dad used to live in a time that these animals were abundant in Dutch rivers/channels/waterways. People used to catch them themselves because they were sometimes too abundant. Nowadays, because of pollution and other reasons they are unfortunately not that present anymore.

Appreciate this one.. respect to the sustainable farmers.

Hell, pigs feet has become expensive too, most people think they are revolting, but that's because they haven't tried them in a stew. On cold winter days, you would choose a hot pig trotter stew than crab claws, trust me, and I love seafood.

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.

17:45 we can tell straight up he is a nice guy by how he smiles after talking about his daughter

"Fried egg it will takes years to master."- Japan

So how dose the crab defend itself without any claws?

I love how everyone is talking only about crabs and eels. Why isn't anyone talking about how they should be harvesting the gonads from the purple urchins instead of the red ones. Sure they may not taste as good, but there are just way too many of them

This is probably the most interesting food based doc I have seen in years.

Yo, guys from Business Insider please make a high res wallpaper out of the shot in 2:46. Loved the video.

I thought they was playing when they said people eat Barnacles.😂😂

7:03 wtf stop giving them a painful death and have a heart

From the UK. When young we used to go fishing and liked to eat our catch. One day we caught a Common Eel and decided to give it a go, it was pretty tasty and was a bit like salty chicken.

That eel pond seems overcrowded. Also what would happen if you fell in there?

Imagine meeting some girl in a bar... "I'm a sales rep for Pepsi. What do you do?" "I clean sea urchin gonads." "Ok fine don't tell me."

Poor stone crabs, cruel humans

Just a thought, if we forced (for example) sea urchins to be less expensive and more economically viable, would the the (probable) increased consumption of them aid in regrowth of kelp, to help stabilize the situation? almost sounds like they're an invasive species in the area and quickly overrunning their own food supply. Otherwise I see them dying out very quickly within a few years.

I like this episode! So insightful for the subject matter 👍👍

thanks for an informative show!

Feel bad for the crabs, how can they expect them to survive if they remove both the claws.

They need otters to save the kelp forests in Santa Barbara

They got me dying when I saw them throw the baby eels 😂

I love learning new things like this.

It's the cooking skill not the eel itself that makes it expensive. In Melbourne, Australia you can catch eel in almost every river or creek, every single time you go there. Targeting them you can use raw steak pieces and will get one every time usually within an hour, but they are often a common by-catch when using other baits. They are essentially the same eel, almost no difference, can be cooked the exact same ways. The old timers loved them and knew how to cook and eat eel properly, but generations since then usually don't like eating them and see them as a nuisance by-catch.

From each example, it’s clear that sustainability means longevity of industry. I wish that this concept were more important to commercial industries.

we have gooseneck barnacles in japan too, and we call them “kame no te” which means turtle hand since they look like little turtle legs/hands! the dinosaur feet was cute though too

You know if you know about Unagi (eel) sushi. I still haven't had Uni (urchin) but I have tried Akagai (red clam), which slaps so hard. Squid and octopus also taste lovely, but neither them nor red clam are thought of as "rare game" which doesn't affect the taste whatsoever

Taking both claws from the crabs aren’t cool. One I understand. Two, that’s just being greedy.

I don’t see why someone doesn’t gather all those purple urchins so they don’t eat all the kelp? They talk about how dead it is that there is only a fraction of how much kelp is still there, yet they just swim right by thousands of purple urchins. Somebody, even if it’s just fish and wildlife agents, otta pick all those purple urchins up! Duh! Sell permits, or raise the price of permits, to cover the expense of the purple urchin divers.

I really like looking at that tiny eel go for the chum paste.

My dad owns a farm in Indonesia, some of the really wet grounds can have eels and anyone can just try to catch them and eat it for dinner. Its not as good as unagi but its still yummy.

Good old humans. We are running out of eels to eat and destroying their habitat. Yet never once does it occur to us to protect the habitat or reduce consumption.

I have been a fishmonger since 1992, and the best thing I have ever eaten or sold are Nantucket and Cape Cod Bay Scallops. In 1992 I would sell them for $10 a pound. Today the run over $50 a pound. As far as stone crab goes, I have eaten many a pound, but if given the choice I would always choose 4/7 American (not Russian) Red King Crab.

It's like cutting my heads and saying go live your life.

Thank you

How would the stone crab eat when it loses both claws?

I swear the Japanese turn everything into an art

Now it makes sense why the Sea Urchin ceviche at Dorsia is so expensive!

Eel doesn’t sound incredibly appetizing to me, but boy the finished product looks good. That stone crab looks great too, I didn’t realize they typically just harvest one claw.

You forgot the Caviar, the golden food of rich.

Something about watching a crab get tossed into the ocean is funny lmao

just curious, can they not build some kind of floating dock on those islands for harvesting barnacles so they can more safely get off and on their boats?

That looks freaking delicious!!!

Good video 😃👍

So pescatarian is actually eating meat as you said you’re using pigs feet to feed these crabs so the question will stand.

Imagine being one of those crabs, one day you're chilling and then a box catches you, they take your claws then yeet you back to the water

7:16 homie didn’t have to throw that crab back in like that 😂😂😂😂

Watching those eel's thrashing and writhing is weirdly satisfying.

Don’t forget those eels are also exported from the United States from places like South Carolina sent to Japan to put in a can and then all the way back to an Asian market. I absolutely love you it is a very tender nice tasting meat that you can treat like a beef for your meat even though it is still fish is full of good flavor oil texture fat it’s very good. When people read those words they do not understand but it is absolutely delicious I wish we could grow eels here in Appalachian

Some of the names of these fish parts are so hilarious. Gonads! Peduncle? C'mon, I love it.

No thank you, I’d have to be starving to death before I’d eat eel.

16:59 now I see why New Zealand's Sea Urchin is so expensive, yet our families freely dive for them nearly on a regular

Very interesting and nice piece

Its crazy how many giant sea urchins there are in cali, they are prized in southern Italy and there are very few left due to over fishing

Sea Urchin is invasive in Northern California. If you ever RU-vid for North California Half Moon Bay foraging, you’ll see there are thousands of them on the coast to be harvested. Still, they’re so delicate that they can be very expensive to ship. But if you’re paying for more than $10 for a whole cluster of uni gonads in California, you’re overpaying.

It's funny seeing the Eel restaurant owner saying he's concerned about his restaurant but there's no mention of anything he's done for the preservation/conservation of these beautiful animals.

I’m just amazed. Japanese have made their lives so fkn difficult man 😂. 8 years of training just for grilling? Bakhayaro. You need to visit my backyard over the summer weekend. Show you what grilling is. Sheeeeet

Yes. They are incredibly expensive. Because they'd have to pay me a million to eat that stuff.

it makes me wonder what the marketability is for those smaller invasive urchins....like...sure they're smaller, but is their gonads any good? it sure is available! AND they're negatively impacting the better ones. so....perhaps collecting the invasive also...

I feel sad about the eels being extinct, in new Zealand eels can be found in rivers and you can catch them easily at night, I only catch about 3-4 a year. I hope they don't become endangered in the future.

I remember getting stone crabs as a kid, never really thought about it much after

I got to try sea urchin sushi once, and it was really good. I think I had nigiri; it was at a restaurant near Chicago, back in 2013.

My first reaction after seeing the thumbnail was, is it even considered as food😂

take a shot every time you hear gonads

I’m probably one of the few people who hate the way they treat the eels