Giant Bluefin Tuna Sells for $736,000

Image: Shizuo Kambayashi / AP

The year’s first fish auction at Tsukiji, the world’s largest wholesale fish market located in Tokyo, produced a giant Bluefin tuna that sold for approximately $736,000.

The tuna weighed 754 pounds, nearly double the size of the previous record holder from 2001, which weighed 445 pounds.

Yuktaka Hasegawa, an official, said, “It was an exceptionally large fish, but we were all surprised by the price.”

The enormous tuna was sold and shared by the owners of Kyubey, a high-end sushi restaurant in Tokyo’s Ginza district, and Itamae Sushi, a casual, Hong Kong-based chain. The owners were also the ones who bid and won last year’s top fish.

Entrepreneur Ricky Cheng commented after his bid won and said, “I was nervous when I arrived in Tokyo yesterday, but I am relieved now. Good tuna is really selling to people in Hong Kong and China, and this is a really good fish.”

The Japanese eat approximately 80% of the Atlantic and Pacific bluefins that are caught, making Japan the world’s biggest consumer of seafood. However, due to declining tuna stocks worldwide, Japanese wholesalers do face growing calls for tighter fishing laws. In November, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas cut the bluefin fishing quota in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean by about 4%. Additional measures to improve enforcement of quotas on bluefin were also recently agreed upon.

Image: Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters

Image: Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP - Getty Images

Source: Luxury Launches