Ikejime: a humane way to kill fish that makes them tastier

By Katherine Waters

“I’ll have to have a pair of glasses to do this shortly,” says Daniel Wood as he threads a wire through the spinal cord of a dead sea bass. As the wind whistles eerily through the fishing lines, the dead fish seems to spring to life. Its fins flare, its mouth gapes and its body spasms as the metal filament proceeds along the length of its spine, destroying nerves. When the filament reaches its cranium, the fish relaxes. Wood removes the wire, checks the incisions at the tail and gills and submerges the bass in a bucket to bleed out before transferring it to a cooler filled with a slurry of water and ice.

It’s a calm day in Cornwall and we’re drifting in Wood’s boat, Orca, just off the Lizard, the southernmost tip of mainland Britain. Wood, dressed in a sun hat and a thick camouflage-print jumper under heavy-duty yellow waders, is one of a handful of British fishermen practising ikejime, a Japanese way to kill fish which – its advocates claim – is both more humane than other methods and likely to result in tastier fish. Wood was taught ikejime by Yoshinori Ishii, the head chef at Umu, a restaurant in London with two Michelin stars. When Yoshinori arrived in Britain from New York nine years ago, he was appalled by the quality of produce available. “It was like I lost a hand,” he recalls. “Ingredients are most important in Japanese cuisine.”