Tuna sells for record K9.9mil

The owner of a Japanese sushi restaurant chain on Saturday set a record by paying more than US$3 million (K9.9 million) for a bluefin tuna in the year’s first auction at Tokyo’s new fish market, exceeding his own record price of 2013, Reuters reported.
Kiyoshi Kimura, pictured, who owns the Sushizanmai chain, paid 333.6 million yen (K10.33mil) for the 278kg fish caught off the coast of northern Japan’s Aomori prefecture, or double what he had paid six years ago.
“The tuna looks so tasty and very fresh, but I think I did too much,” Kimura told reporters outside the market later.
“I expected it would be between 30 million yen (K929,267) and 50 million yen (K1.54mil), or 60 million yen (K1.85mil) at the highest, but it ended up 5 times more.”
Saturday’s event was the first New Year auction of the Toyosu market, after the famed Tsukiji fish market shut last year to provide temporary parking for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. Kimura had held the record for top price paid for a single fish at the new year’s auction for six straight years until 2017.
Last year, the owner of a different fish restaurant chain paid the highest price.
After the auction, the fish was taken to one of Sushizanmai’s branches located in the old market of Tsukiji.
Tuna is prized around the world for its use in sushi, but experts warn growing demand has made it an endangered species.
Papua New Guinea’s tuna fishery is primarily skipjack and yellow fin fish species with smaller quantities of bigeye and albacore, according to the National Fisheries Authority.
Tuna is found throughout the PNG fisheries zone, especially in the north and east.
As tuna are a migratory species moving from area to area depending on climatic conditions, the quantity found in the PNG zone may vary significantly from year to year.
A regional approach to managing tuna is therefore important.
PNG is a party to a number of bilateral and multilateral arrangements for this purpose.
Catch is usually about 150,000 metric tonnes to 200,000mt per year.
It is estimated that the resource can sustain much higher annual catches of 250,000mt to 300,000mt.
The potential market value is about K1 billion depending on the commodity price.
Catch from PNG waters accounts for 20 to 30 per cent of the regional catch and is about 10 per cent of the global catch.
There is now concern that yellow fin and bigeye tuna may be nearing an overfished state.