TOKYO — A Japanese sushi chain boss has bid a winning 74.2 million yen — or about $849,000 Canadian — for a 212-kilogram bluefin tuna in what may be the last auction at the current site of Tokyo’s Tsukiji market.
The winning bid Thursday for the prized but imperilled species was the second highest ever after a record 155.4 million yen ($1.8 million) bid in 2013.
Kiyomura Corp. owner Kiyoshi Kimura posed after the predawn New Year auction with the gleaming, man-sized fish, which was caught off the coast of northern Japan’s Aomori prefecture. He often wins the annual auction — earning him the nickname the “tuna king.”
According to the Guardian, he said the fish was “a bit expensive, but I am happy that I was able to successfully win at auction a tuna of good shape and size”.
“I want everyone to taste this delicious tuna,” he said as he posed with his prize bluefin, the newspaper reported. But not everyone may be able to afford it. Currently, he charges about 400 yen (under $5) for one piece of the fatty fish, but at the auction price, the Guardian calculates a single piece of fatty tuna sushi would cost about 25 times that, or as much as $125.
Last year’s New Year auction was supposed to be the last at Tsukiji’s current location. The shift to a new facility on Tokyo Bay was delayed due to soil contamination at the former gas plant site.
Conservationists are also furious about the annual auction, which they worry glorifies the continued overfishing of a dwindling species. The population has plummeted by about 97 per cent and many of the fish are captured before they reach three years of age, which diminishes the species’ ability to reproduce.
“If fishing continues at its current rate, then Pacific bluefin stocks will fall to levels that are commercially unsustainable, but Japanese officials continue to say that catch reductions will place too big a burden on fishermen,” Jamie Gibbon, officer for global tuna conservation at the Pew Charitable Trusts, told the Guardian. “Short-term profits are being put ahead of long-term conservation.”
— with files from National Post staff
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