Tokyo. Sushi restaurant pays more than 1.2 million euros for 276 kilo tuna – Observer

It’s not the highest price of all but it exceeds one million. At the most prestigious fish auction for the Japanese New Year, in Tokyo, a 276-kilogram bluefin tuna was sold, practically the weight and size of a motorcycle. Sushi restaurant chain Onodera Group paid 207 million yen (1,269,324 euros) for the fish, Japanese newspaper The Japan News reported.

It is the second highest value reached by a tuna in this auction since 1999, the year in which these sales began to be recorded, according to the Tokyo government, cited by the Japanese news agency Kyodo News. The record remains held by another bluefin tuna that, interestingly, weighed just two kilos more: 333.6 million yen, two million euros, in 2019.

This now auctioned tuna was caught off the coast of Oma, northern Japan, on Saturday morning and the chairman of Onodera Group believes it will bring joy to people through “good food”.Shinji Nagao believes that “the first tuna is something meant to bring good luck,” he said. Therefore, “it will be served in 13 Ginza Onodera restaurants in two of the three countries where Onodera is located, as can be seen in the site organization’s internet network, in addition to being included on the menu of all Nadaman restaurants in Japan.

This is the sixth time (2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025) that Onodera has won the tuna auction, the company says, and last year it paid 114 million yen for the best fish.

Masahiro Takeuchi, a 73-year-old fisherman, told reporters in Oma that tuna“I was as fat as a cow”, remembering the moment he saw him, on Saturday morning, already captured, he quotes Kyodo News. “It’s like a dream. I’m always worried about how many more years I can do this work, but I’m incredibly happy,” he added.

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“The tuna caught in Oma is of high quality”, classifies the Oma tourism board, which guarantees that this fish has already “become a collective regional brand”, noting that it weighs more than 30 kilos, “proudly displays a rigorously managed, with a serial number indicating which boat caught it and how it was caught.”

Pacific bluefin tuna is among the biggest and fastest fish in the worldmigrating from the coasts of Japan to California in one of the most remarkable migratory journeys on Earth for its scope.

In 2017, Japan was among the tuna fishing nations to reach a historic agreement imposing strict quotas on fishing for the speciesafter over-trapping caused its population to decline to less than 3% of historic highs, recalls The Washington Post.

Bluefin tuna sold for a historic €2.7 million at Tokyo New Year’s auction

In 2022 (the year with the most recent data), the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, cited by The Washington Post, concluded that Pacific bluefin tuna had recovered to nearly a quarter of its uncaught levels — exceeding the 20% target. defined by regulators for the year 2034.

The fish is typically caught in the Tsugaru Strait — a channel frequented by tuna traveling between the Sea of ​​Japan and the Pacific Ocean — using traditional pole and line methods rather than a trawl net, the most popular method for catching tuna. Pacific blue.

The first auction of the year at Tokyo’s Toyosu Market — one of the largest wholesale fish markets in the world — typically yields very high prices.