Shizuoka's food cultureKnow
Numazu wakame seaweed - aiming for a new specialty product
Release date: 2024.07.03
Marine Products
Features
Spring:
Numazu City is a region with a thriving fishing industry, where, in addition to boat fishing for whitebait, the city also farms a wide variety of marine fish, such as red sea bream and horse mackerel, which are rare in the prefecture. In recent years, seaweed farming has also become popular in Numazu City, with wakame seaweed being a typical example. Wakame is grown in the winter when the water temperature drops and harvested in the spring. Salted and processed wakame can be enjoyed all year round, but fresh raw wakame is a precious ingredient that can only be eaten during the spring. Wakame farming itself is carried out throughout the prefecture, but as freshness is important to enjoy the texture of raw wakame, it is mainly consumed in the areas around where it is produced.
This time, we would like to introduce you to Numazu wakame and the efforts we have made to get more people to eat it.
Numazu's wakame seaweed is produced by fishermen who are normally engaged in a variety of fishing activities, including whitebait fishing and fish farming. Wakame farming begins at the end of the year, when ropes with small pieces of wakame attached to them are floated in the sea. Wakame seaweed floating in the sea grows with nutrients from the sea and sunlight, so it does not need to be watered or fertilized like plants on land. At first, the wakame seaweed is too small to see with the naked eye, but it grows rapidly in the cold winter sea, and in just two or three months, some can grow to over one meter in length.
Wakame seaweed growing in the ocean
The mature wakame is harvested by fishermen. They carefully cut off each stalk that grows from the rope. At this stage, the wakame still has "mekabu" at the base, but the mekabu is separated and sold separately from the leaves.
Harvesting Mekabu
Next, the harvested wakame is brought back to land and sorted. Because it is grown in the ocean, the harvested wakame may contain small creatures and dirt. During the sorting process, these are removed by hand, leaving only the clean parts.
Sorting process
Once all of this is done, the wakame is finally ready to be sold. This laboriously produced wakame is mainly sold as raw wakame at nearby direct sales stores and restaurants. Fresh raw wakame is very popular among local people and has become a popular product.
Next, I would like to introduce some of the efforts we have made to get wakame to more people.
Currently, Numazu wakame is mainly sold as raw wakame, and is popular among local people, but in order to expand production in the future, it will be necessary to develop new ways to eat it and expand sales channels. Therefore, we brought raw wakame to a restaurant run by the "Food City Creation Workers" and received positive feedback, and we also considered new ways to eat it and identified issues for expanding sales channels.
The craftsmen were given the wakame stems, mekabu, and leaves to evaluate, and they praised the excellent texture of the stems and mekabu, as well as the beautiful way the leaves changed color when boiled.
Additionally, while wakame is commonly eaten in miso soup or salads, the possibility of using it in smoothies and sweets has been shown, expanding the ways in which wakame can be eaten.
In identifying issues for expanding sales channels, we offered Numazu wakame to customers who visited our store and talked to them. As a result, we heard comments such as "I didn't know wakame was produced in Numazu," and it became clear that raising awareness was an issue. In addition, we received feedback from craftsmen that it would be easier to explain to customers and use if the difference in quality compared to wakame from other production areas was clear. In the future, we would like to work together with related parties to ensure that Numazu wakame is widely accepted as a new specialty product, while keeping these issues in mind.
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