Japan sushi boss pays $117,000 for giant endangered bluefin tuna

A Japanese sushi boss today paid more than $117,000 for a giant bluefin tuna as Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market held its last New Year auction ahead of a much-needed modernisation move. Bidding stopped at a whopping 14 million yen for the 200kg (440lb) fish – a threatened species – that was caught off Japan’s northern coast. The price paid by Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the firm behind the popular Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, was three times higher than last year but still far below a record 155.4 million yen paid by the sushi chain operator in 2013 – when a Hong Kong restaurant chain weighed in and drove up bidding – for a slightly larger fish of similar quality.

Given the already dire state of the population - decimated to just four percent of unfished levels - it is of particular concern that the auction price is rising again.

Amanda Nickson, director of Global Tuna Conservation

The New Year auction is a traditional feature at Tsukiji, where bidders pay way over the odds for the prestige of buying the first fish of the year. But it came as Japan, the world’s largest consumer of bluefin tuna, faces growing calls for a trade ban on the species, which environmentalists warn is on its way to extinction. The population of Pacific bluefin tuna is set to keep declining “even if governments ensure existing management measures are fully implemented”, Amanda Nickson, director of Global Tuna Conservation at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said in a release.

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