unspawned
新しい牡蠣がお披露目されました。今までの特産品に加わり、更なる魅力となりそうです。
Young oysters up-and-coming Sanriku stars
The Yomiuri Shimbun
MINAMI-SANRIKU, Miyagi — Farmers in Minami-Sanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, are cultivating rare unspawned oysters called Amakoro-gaki, aiming to sell them as the town’s brand oyster and thereby restore the oyster farming industry that was heavily damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Amakoro take less time to grow. They have not yet produced eggs and are sweeter than conventional oysters once they reach bite-size.
This is the first attempt to launch full-fledged sales of Amakoro, and shipping is scheduled to start in early June. The oyster farmers who volunteered to grow the rare variety are trying to establish a brand of Amakoro and increase distribution, in a bid to make the oysters a symbol of the town’s restoration and spur revitalization of the local economy.
以下省略
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002944954
今回取り上げるのはunspawnedです。まずspawnを『ライトハウス英和辞典』（第5版 研究社）で調べてみますと、他動詞で「（魚などが）（卵）を産む」自動詞では「産卵する」という意味があることがわかりました。
LDOCEでは “if a fish or frog spawns, it produces eggs in large quantities at the same time”という意味が載っていました。今回はこれに否定のunがついていますので、産卵前のという意味になるかと思われます。そして記事の中にも “They have not yet produced eggs and are sweeter than conventional oysters once they reach bite-size.”という説明がされています。
この表現は過去にも他の意味で取り上げられております。(aqua)
