Bowermaster’s Adventures — Russia’s nuclear legacy

by Jon Bowermaster on

Just around the corner from Petropavlovsk, ten miles by land or sea, located across Avachinskaya Bay on a small peninsula called Krasheninnikova sits Russia’s largest nuclear submarine base. It is off limits to outsiders and a shell of what it was during the Soviet Union’s heyday. Today – judging by a simple Google map search – there are just a half-dozen active nuclear subs sitting at its docks. Worrying to those who pay attention to such things are the shadows on the far edge of the docks on the same map, indicating somewhere between a dozen and twenty subs piled up next to each other. They are said to be at varying degrees of decommissioning.

For decades the submarine station and a couple nearby support bases provided good jobs for locals and drew many Russians and Ukrainians to live in this easternmost outpost. They are also the reason that until the end of the Cold War Kamchatka was off-limits to the rest of the world. Even today, twenty years later, Russia continues to maintain a heavy military presence here.

The operation of nuclear-powered submarines generates considerable amounts of nuclear waste. Liquid and solid radioactive wastes need to be removed from submarines and stored. In addition, periodically the submarine needs to be refueled, thus spent fuel needs to be removed from the submarine and also stored. Decommissioning a nuclear submarine generates these streams of waste and in addition, the refueled reactor compartment must be dealt with.

It is a little worrying to me, an outsider, that the region’s two biggest industries overlap: Nuclear sub decommissioning and fishing. If the same worries locals, I can’t get it out of them during my day wandering the streets of Petropavlovsk. Most likely they are concerned too but are not going to share their feelings with a stranger.

Occasional testing of local air and water for radiation is done and recent tests suggest levels of both near the Rybachiy base had “slightly-elevated-levels. How much radioactivity is too much? One expert told me a story of some smalltime crooks who broke into the subs waiting to be decommissioned to steal gold used in their construction; stashing the goods under their beds was apparently not a very wise thing to do, given their radioactivity, which extracted the ultimate payback.

There are other concerns. In recent years there have been a handful of accidents involving Russian subs, fires, mostly and a couple very publicized sinkings. The Russian Northern Fleet’s main storage for nuclear waste at Kola Peninsula is reportedly leaking radioactivity. During 1997 all spent nuclear fuel, which was sent to Andreeva Bay, was stored in the open, without protection. At other big submarine bases, including the big one at Murmansk, there have been reports of nuclear subs being scuttled – sunk to the bottom of the ocean – without proper clean-up of the nuclear reactors aboard. Russians have previously admitted to dumping nuclear waste at sea, off the coast of Japan. The future of Ribachiy remains a big question.

This is from a U.S. State Department report: “In Russia every step of the process is facing problems. The support complex which was already in poor shape and accident-prone during Soviet times has been particularly burdened in the last few years. Shore-side waste sites are full of low-level radioactive waste and spent fuel. Shipments of the spent fuel for reprocessing have been delayed due to lack of funds and equipment. The service ships, which unload the spent fuel from submarines, are also full and in poor shape (and some have suffered accidents). The shipyards where the work is done are facing financial shortages, power blackouts and strikes. There are no final land-based storage sites for decommissioned reactor compartments removed from submarines, so they are being stored afloat in bays near naval bases. Finally, contamination is widespread at waste storage sites in the North and Far East due to accidents. Lower-level contamination is thought to plague virtually every support facility for the fleet. In addition, accidents on submarines have lead to contamination of the surrounding area.

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“The massive retirement of nuclear powered submarines has further aggravated this problem. The number of nuclear-powered submarines has declined substantially since the end of the Cold War as many first and second-generation nuclear powered submarines have been decommissioned. Also, due to lack of financing and arms control treaties, even third generation submarines are being removed from service. The Soviet Union/Russia constructed some 248 submarines by 1996 and some 150-170 have been removed from service. Only some third of these have had their spent fuel removed. Of the fifty or so submarines that have had their fuel removed only some 20-25 have been partially scrapped and their reactor compartments removed, sealed up, stored afloat. A particular problem is that at least one submarine in the Northern Fleet and three submarines in the Pacific Fleet were retired due to nuclear accidents. They have damaged spent fuel on board and the Russian Navy is uncertain about how to decommission them.

“Another concern with decommissioned submarines which still have their spent fuel onboard is accidents. Naval officers fear another major accident could occur, like what transpired on 10 August 1985 when an Echo II nuclear-powered submarine reactor exploded during a refueling at the Chazhma Bay shipyard. Another worry is that a decommissioned nuclear submarine could sink at dockside. On 29-30th May 1997, this happened when a decommissioned submarine sank at the submarine facilities in Kamchatka. Reportedly a vessel collided with the moored submarine, and it sank. The Russian Navy claimed all fuel had been offloaded from the submarine, and it posed no environmental hazard. However, such reports are not reassuring.

“The most acute problem today is that of the decommissioned submarines and the shore-side support facilities and maintenance ships. Little thought or planning had gone into what to do with retired submarines prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since 1991, a lot of thought has been devoted to this problem, but the absence of finances has meant serious environmental problems continue, and will probably continue for a decade or more to come. The Russian Navy and surrounding countries remain concerned that a major accident could ensue.

“In March 1993, after several years of revelations about the dumping of radioactive waste at sea, the Russian government released a White Paper describing some 30 years of the dumping of radioactive waste at sea. The so-called Yablokov report detailed how 18 damaged naval nuclear reactors and two internal reactor screen assemblies were dumped in the seas around the Soviet Union. Sixteen reactors were dumped in the Kara Sea and 2 in the Sea of Japan. One reactor screen assembly was dumped in the Kara Sea and one off Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the northern Pacific Ocean.

“Several scientific expeditions to the dump areas in the Arctic found local contamination from dumped materials. But there is no evidence of migration so far. However, all dump sites were not found and fully investigated.”

After reading various high-level reports, and looking out over what would appear to be a beautiful northern Pacific seascape from the hills above Petropavlovsk … I don’t think I’ll be buying second-home property here.

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Kamchatka, Russia

by Jon Bowermaster on

This land of volcanoes and earthquakes — the western frontier of the literary “Ring of Fire” — is still a month away from true spring. Dirty, crusted snow lies beneath the leafless trees and in the gutters along Petropavlovsk’s main streets, which already look pretty grim, lined as they are by Soviet-era buildings. The only hints of color in town are the red-and-yellow hot dog-beer-and-coffee stands across from Lenin Square and the colorfully painted walls of a local gym. Otherwise, from the bottle-strewn banks of the fishing harbor to the top of the hills looking out over Avachinskaya Bay, the operative description of this city at the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula is … grey.

Long a place shrouded in secrecy, Kamchatka was until recently known to Westerners only as a closed military region or as a name on the Risk board. We are at the very edge of the Russian Far East, a region known locally as “the back of the beyond.” The seven hundred and fifty mile long peninsula is lined by a pair of mountain ranges – the Sredenny (Central) and Vostochny (Eastern) – and from the air looks like a big fish. The Kamchatka River fills the trough between the two ranges. Encircling the city are snow-capped volcanoes, nearly 300 dot the peninsula, a tenth still active. When I ask the first people I meet — two young journalism students, Victoria and Ivan – if they remember the last eruption they smile, wracking their memories.

“I think it was like two weeks ago,” says Victoria. “But they happen so often, it’s hard to be sure. And earthquakes, too. But we are used to them. Why do you think the buildings are so … solid?”

Three-quarters of the peninsula’s 400,000 people live in Petropavlovsk, the capital city founded by Russian explorer Vitus Bering and named after his two ships, the St. Peter and St. Paul. The Russians and Ukrainians here mostly came to work at its once-booming navy station; ten miles across the bay sits Russia’s second largest nuclear submarine base. The indigenous Itelmen and Koryaks are still mostly nomadic reindeer herders. Judging by the attire of the locals waiting in long lines at bus stops, the biggest imports are patent leather jackets and boots with spiked heels (for women) and camouflage (for men).

The peninsula is known for an amazing diversity and abundance of wildlife: Sable, ermine, Siberian bighorn (or snow) sheep, the Kamchatka brown bear, crab and, of course, salmon in large quantities. Today it’s said that Kamchatka’s industries can be divided into two categories: fishing and those that support fishing, though some are at risk of being over-fished. At the dock I eat thick slabs of brown bread slathered with red caviar.

As I munch at the dock I watch big fishing boats readying to head back out to sea. When I ask what they fish, the answer is simple: “Whales.”

“But isn’t whaling illegal?”

“Listen,” says a fisherman in blue rubber bibs hosing down the back ramp of one of the gunmetal grey boats. “I know in Alaska it is illegal to shoot even a bird. But here, this is Russia. Nothing is illegal.”

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Fish are ninety-three percent of Kamchatka’s exports, particularly salmon and king crab (though after walking the city for a day, I have to say it was very, very difficult to find either … or even a restaurant to ask for them. “Eating out is not popular,” admits the only guidebook reference to food I could find). Kamchatka’s biggest import is fuel, which in the recent past led to some trouble. I ask why there appear to be so many burned-out homes along the main hills. “About ten years ago we did not receive enough coal,” says a man drinking coffee across from Lenin Square. “People were using open fires to heat inside. Obviously there were some … problems.”

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1990 opened the region to the outside world and there is something of a tourist industry here, though small. A land still being born, thanks to the near-constant volcanic activity, Kamchatka can be a place of breathtaking beauty and unique wildlife; this afternoon when the sun pops out and the sky clears a perimeter lined with snow-capped mountains is revealed across the wind-swept bay.

There is a saying here which loosely translates as, “In the winter it’s not too cold, but in the summer it’s not very warm!” Pharmacologists are on record that a cup of fresh Kamchatka water drunk in the morning heals the liver and stomach, cleans the blood vessels and prohibits bacteria. Other scientific studies detail increased levels of radioactivity in both air and water, thanks to the decommissioning of nuclear subs taking place just across the bay. Which makes me somewhat reluctant to drink from its taps or, if I could find one, eat one of those giant king crabs.

The only Russian phrase I pick up during a day of wandering PK? “Kamchatka, ehto strannoe mesto” (It’s a strange place).

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Welcome to squid city!

by Jon Bowermaster on

For the past couple nights I’ve dreamed about being attacked by giant calamari; not the fried variety, but the long, gelatinous species, which wrap me up in big squid rings and push me into the sea. Which I’m sure has everything to do with spending the day in Hakodate, on the big island of Hokkaido, Japan’s squid capital.

The streets leading to the morning market are heavy with restaurants, each featuring an illustration of a squid on its awning, billboard or even in neon. At open-air shops, tanks of still swimming squid are surrounded by trays of squid on ice, squid wrapped tight in plastic, dried squid, hammered squid, all cut, sliced and diced. Souvenir shops feature plastic squids, squid pens, even drinking cups made from … squid. You won’t be surprised that squid have been a staple here for thousands of years.

(The biggest squid ever caught? Twenty-four feet long. The largest invertebrate on the planet, they are thought to grow to as long as sixty feet but because they live at such great depths have never been studied in the wild.)

My question for these shopkeepers and restaurant owners, of course, is: Are they at risk of taking too many squid from the sea? Long thought beyond risk of being over fished – they don’t live long anyway, are a very prolific species and fluctuate naturally – the reason they seem to be safe will surprise you.

Normally at home along the coast from Mexico to Chile they are deep-sea creatures, living at depths of 3,000 to 5,000 feet they’re increasingly being found in the colder waters off California, Canada and Alaska. Jumbo squid, six to eight feet long, are booming in areas where they have not previously boomed. The reason for the boom takes us back to Japan, especially the big market at Tuskiji in Tokyo where we were a few days before. Guess what is the main predator of squid? Blue fin tuna. Which are now being badly over fished and sold by the thousands a day in Japan’s markets.

Lots of fingers point to Japan as the greatest threat to the depletion of fish around the world. The Japanese are the world’s biggest consumer of fish; Tuskiji is like an extraordinary mortuary for global sea life. Not only do the Japanese pose a problem for other countries’ fish stocks, but also threaten the world’s fish stocks as a whole. Each day, tens of thousands of tons of marine life, clawed from rocks and scooped from oceans by factory ships working 24 hours a day, are auctioned in the early hours. Japan’s taste for seafood only appears limited by price and availability. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates Japan devours 30 percent of the world’s fresh fish, close to 170 pounds a year for each man, woman and child. Australians, by comparison, manage just 40 pounds.

Some conservationists and marine scientists are increasingly raising questions about how long Japan’s appetite can be accepted as an unquestioned cultural imperative. The constant plundering of the ocean is devastating fish stocks and destroying ecosystems. While we ponder that, there remains one good thing in the sea: There are plenty of squid … so get out the calamari recipes.

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Going Going Gone! The World’s Biggest Tuna Auction

by Jon Bowermaster on

My first glimpse of Tsukiji fish market’s big, daily tuna auction is surreal: A thousand frozen blue fin tuna – weighing between one and two hundred pounds each – laid out in symmetrical rows on a concrete floor. That first look through a scratched plastic peephole, blurring the edges of the scene, makes it evermore otherworldly.

A pair of cavernous auction rooms sit at the far back of the market. Entry to each is through eight big yellow canvas roll-down doors, each bay representing a different company. Beginning around three a.m. the big fish are laid out; an hour later buyers or their representatives – from restaurants, supermarkets and vendors within the market – arrive to begin their daily inspection. This being Japan it is all very prompt: At 5:30 the first side of the room is auctioned, at 6 the second side. By 6:15, 6:20 at the latest, tuna are being dragged out and loaded onto carts to be sent all around Tsukiji, Tokyo and cities beyond, some destined for as far away as China.

Tuna are the biggest business in the world’s biggest fish market. Japanese love their blue fin and pay dearly. The biggest and best sell for $50,000, $80,000, occasionally more than $100,000. For a single fish. Last night we visited a high-end sushi joint in the chi-chi neighborhood of Ginza, which had split the cost of this year’s traditional “first” tuna with another restaurant, on January 8th – for a 129 kilos (261 pounds) tuna they paid more than $104,000. For the next several days’ lines stretched around the block for a taste.

The tuna come to Tsukiji from all over the world; Japanese processing boats scour the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere buying up everything they can. They are not alone. One result of this rapacious demand, according to the World Wildlife Fund, is that blue fin tuna may be wiped out in the next few years.

This morning laid out in neat rows, still wearing sheen of frost and numbered with red food die there would appear to be no worry about running out of tuna. Each fish is split along its belly and a chunk has been cut out of its side to be used as a handhold. The tail has been cut off and a circular piece of meat dangles there by a thin piece of skin. A flap of meat has been cut flayed back near the tail, which is the main spot of inspection. Apparently the back and forth motion of the tail generates lots of oil in the fish and the more oil the better.

More than one hundred buyers mill about the frozen fish, in a kind of uniform: Blue coveralls or jacket with company name in white on the chest. Rubber boots. Ball cap with official badge indicating the buyer’s number pinned to its peak. The tools of the trade are simple: A flashlight, a wooden handled metal hook for lifting and probing, a cloth or paper towel hanging from the belt for wiping off fingers and hands post probing, a tiny notebook for jotting in and a cell phone for communicating with an absent boss. My favorite shopper is tall for a Japanese and wears a green windbreaker the same color as his dyed green hair, which is swept back Elvis-style. He’s got to be in his sixties, wears thick glasses and jokes with everyone around him as he inspects.

The inspection is equivalent to the kicking of a new car’s tires. With one finger the flap of meat near where the tail used to be is lifted and a flashlight shined on the exposed meat. Sometimes the flap is held back with the wooden handled hook, the density of the meat of the meat tested with hook or simply eyeballed. If they like what they see they will whack at the meat with the metal hook, opening up the still mostly frozen tuna and then dig into it with their fingers, pulling out a red morsel which they roll in their fingers into a ball. Sometimes they take a big sniffing of the rare meat. I half expect them to pull a bottle of soy out of their pocket, juice it up and have a taste. I watch to see if they slip the meat into their pockets for later, but instead they most often drop it onto the floor, wipe their fingers on the towel hung from their belt and move onto the next fish. The biggest buyers bid on lots, buying a half-dozen at a time; some are here for an individual fish.

I’m curious about the hierarchy of the market and try to ask a couple Japanese men standing beside me. My assumption is that the auctioneers must be near the top of the heap. They say no, contending that everyone at the market – whether truck driver, fish cutter, icemaker or auctioneer – is equal. I ask who owns the market and they say they think it is three men. Which makes me wonder if it’s anything like the Fulton Fish Market in New York, which was long “administered” by the mob? One thing is clear: There are very few women and no Caucasians (“too tall,” they are told if they apply).

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At exactly 5:30 the first of the two morning auctions begins with frantic hand bell ringing by four simultaneous auctioneers, each representing a different company, each standing on a blue step stool in front of one of the bay doors. Each rings with a different fervor and pace, beginning to shout out loud as the ringing increases. With a quick doff of his ball cap – to the fish, or the spirits at large? – each is off, shouting and gesticulating, faces turning bright red, yelling what sounds to the non-Japanese ear something like, “TACO TACO TACO …. HIPPO HIPPO HIPPO … SAMPLE SAMPLE SAMPLE … TACO TACO TACO … SAPPY SAPPY SAPPY …” at the top of their lungs.

Each auctioneer has a personal style, bobbing and weaving and shouting in odd fashion, each channeling some kind of individual tuna god. My favorite is a tall man in a blue jumpsuit and brown ball cap, wearing thick glasses and a # 2 pencil stuck in a sleeve pocket. He notates madly in a little book even as his calling gets louder, more fervent, his face maroon, eyes glancing up towards the fluorescents as if he were channeling directly from the god of the sea, yet somehow registering the subtle finger lifting from buyers until calling out the Japanese equivalent of GOING … GOING … GONE. As he shouts a pair of men on either side note with pencil on paper the winning bids and then quickly mark each fish sold with a thick black magic marker.

The whole shebang lasts about ten minutes, sending several hundred fish towards cutting tables scattered around the sprawling market.

Twenty minutes later the second half of the warehouse is auctioned. I keep my eye on an individual buyer, representing a vendor inside the market. I watched him study a particular fish – at one point turning his back to it and grabbing it between his legs, I’m guessing to judge its weight? As soon as his bid was accepted he turned his ball cap around – the number on the metal plate pinned to its peak is his i.d. – he pulled out his hook, grabbed his fish and began dragging it towards the door. Using the handhold cut in its side he hoisted it onto a waiting, man-pulled cart and trailered it off into the maelstrom, on its way by day’s end to someone’s table.

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Fish Mecca

by Jon Bowermaster on

A long line of three-wheeled electric carts steered by oversized circular handlebars, each with an attached four-foot-long wooden bed, whizzes through the narrow aisles of the Tsujiki fish market. Each is steered by a wild-eyed, sometimes smiling, sometimes glaring, Japanese fish monger – one of 60,000+ employees here in the world’s largest fish market – who would just as soon mow you down as avoid you. Balanced precariously on the back of each are a three hundred pound frozen tuna or a tall stack of Styrofoam boxes filled with fish or crushed ice or twenty, three-foot long, just-sawed swordfish steaks.

It’s just after six in the morning and the place has been alive for several hours, though it never really shuts down. The morning’s biggest event – the auction of hundreds of big blue fin tuna – has just finished and its results are being delivered one-by-one to many of the 900 individual stalls in the open-air market. Sunrise pouring through the dust-covered skylights of the 74-year-old market mixes with the fluorescents that light up each small shop, crammed side by side and fronted by tables heavily laden with Styrofoam containers filled with just-dead fish of more than four hundred species and tanks and plastic bags filled with those still swimming.

The Tsujiki (skee-gee) fish market – more officially the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market – is Mecca for fish purveyors and sushi lovers alike. (The more general name is appropriate since under the same roof there are big produce and flower auctions as well … though it’s hard to compare the excitement of bidding for bell peppers with that of this year’s biggest tuna to date, 261 pounds.) For several mornings we’ve gotten up before four a.m. and woken a taxi driver slumbering in his own front seat in order to be here the moment the tuna auction allows its first visitors in. Alex and I have a particular curiosity because over the years we’ve filmed big tuna in the wild and in farms that were ultimately headed here. Seeing them lined up on the floor – frozen, de-tailed and numbered with red food coloring — means we’ve followed them nearly full circle. Our morning sushi-break at 8:30 means we will have truly followed them through the entirely of their lives.

If you care about the health of the world’s ocean and its decreasing abundance of fish, you have to be fascinated by this place for both its size and the economy it creates. Jobs here are highly sought, whether as cart drivers, salesmen, cutters, icemakers, deliverymen, auctioneers or buyers (the emphasis on men is purposeful: of the 60,000-plus workers a tiny handful are women; only a very few work the floor, most are accountants). An American living in Tokyo tells us he is trying desperately to get a job in the market, in part because it pays well and in part because he would be such an oddity. “They will only tell me I’m ‘too tall,’ ” he says, “but what they are really saying is that I’m ‘too white.’ “Each year more than 700,000 metric tons of seafood is sold beneath the market’s roof, roughly $5.5 billion worth.

Walking the narrow aisles among the nine hundred small vendors it’s easy to see how we’ve done such a good job at decimating fish stocks around the world; of course it’s not just the Japanese who are doing so, but they have a per capita consumption of fish far outstripping the rest of the world. Though the market sits on the Tokyo Harbor, virtually all of the fish arrives by truck, some from Japan, most from seas thousands of miles from here.

There are two distinct sections of the market: The “inner market” (jonai shijo) is the licensed wholesale market, where the auctions and most of the processing of the fish take place, and where licensed wholesale dealers operate small stalls. The “outer market” (jogai shijo) is a mixture of wholesale and retail shops selling kitchen tools, restaurant supplies, groceries and seafood, and narrow restaurants, especially sushi restaurants. On our first morning we choose to have breakfast alongside the rubber-booted workers, rather than wait in the long lines of tourists outside the most popular sushi shops, on pork steaks, cabbage and rice.

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The market handles more than four hundred different types of seafood from tiny sardines to six hundred pound tuna, from cheap seaweed to the most expensive caviar. On one counter a live squid is gutted in front of us, its ink squirting everywhere; next-door band saws cut through just-thawing tuna; at the end of the aisle the most popular man in the market – the ice man – lugs fifty-pound blocks of ice to a conveyor which carries it to its crushing. Just beyond the market’s door rises a mountain of Styrofoam boxes being picked over by representatives of all the stalls inside; if still intact the boxes are reused, if cracked or broken they are fed by conveyor into a crusher to be recycled into paving bricks.

The history of the market goes back a century. In August 1918, following the so-called “Rice Riots” (Kome Soudou), which broke out in over one hundred cities and towns in protest against food shortages and the speculative practices of wholesalers, the Japanese government was forced to create new institutions for the distribution of foodstuffs, especially in urban areas. A Central Wholesale Market Law was established in March 1923. The Great Kantō earthquake on September 1, 1923, devastated much of central Tokyo, including the Nihonbashi fish market. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the market was relocated to the Tsukiji district, completed in 1935.

At a neat stall on the backside of the market a trio of men labor over six foot long swordfish, cutting them down to steaks. The master cutter – armed with extremely long, extremely sharp knives – operates on a hydraulic table, which he raises and lowers with his foot. Fresh water runs from a hose washing blood into a drain (amazingly, the whole market smells very … clean … no fish smell at all). With rapid, elegant cuts along its spine he splits it in two and then quarters each side. His partner reduces them to steaks, wraps them in paper towels and plastic and stacks them to be distributed.

I ask if they think there will come a day when we take the last fish from the sea. I’m only partially joking, and translating my question is tricky. But they get the point. Everyone I’ve talked with in the market admits the fish they’re selling today are far smaller than ten years ago; we’ve taken all of the biggest fish already.

“It’s not like cows or chickens,” says the man cutting steaks. “You can’t simply grow more. We never know exactly what’s in the sea, do we? But when these species are gone, I believe there will be more to take their place. I think my job is very secure!”