Record price paid for massive tuna
Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, cuts into his prize purchase at his main restaurant near Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market on Thursday.
January 5th, 2012
07:11 AM ET

Record price paid for massive tuna

Fancy a $50 piece of sushi?

That's what one piece of a 593-pound blue fin tuna sold Thursday at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market for a record $736,000 is worth.

Kiyoshi Kimura, who runs the Sushi-Zanmai chain in Japan, bought the record-setting fish at the first auction of the new year at Japan's main fish market, a popular tourist stop in Tokyo, according to the Tokyo Times.

The previous record for a fish was set at the market in 2011's first sale of the new year, when a Hong Kong restauranteur paid $422,000 for a blue fin. He took that fish to Hong Kong.

Kimura said he wanted to keep this year's top tuna in Japan. It was caught off Amori prefecture.

"We tried very hard to win the bidding, so that we could give Japan a boost and have Japanese people eat the most delicious tuna," the Mainichi Daily News quoted him as saying.

Despite the record price Kimura paid, pieces of the prize fish are expected to sell for around $5 in his restaurants.

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Filed under: Animals • Aquaculture • Fish • Food • Japan
soundoff (162 Responses)
  1. 2EL8

    Tastes like chicken.

    January 5, 2012 at 12:25 pm | Report abuse |
  2. Cynthia W.

    I'm sorry this beautiful creature was destroyed.

    January 5, 2012 at 12:28 pm | Report abuse |
    • Leaf on the Wind

      Beautiful creature? It's a tuna fish, for pete's sake! Get yourself some cheese to go with that whine, okay?

      January 5, 2012 at 1:09 pm | Report abuse |
  3. Truth Teller

    Pass the chop sticks and ginger

    January 5, 2012 at 12:31 pm | Report abuse |
  4. ACB

    Actually there are not plenty of this fish in the sea – Blue Fin are on their way to extinction, mostly due to overfishing for sushi and the high price they fetch... if you are going to eat tuna make it line caught caught yellow fin tuna whenever possible!

    January 5, 2012 at 12:35 pm | Report abuse |
  5. yeti37

    You can tune a violin, but you can't tuna fish (...tune-a-fish...)

    January 5, 2012 at 12:42 pm | Report abuse |
    • Leaf on the Wind

      That joke is older than I am, and I played with dinosaurs when I was a child.

      January 5, 2012 at 1:11 pm | Report abuse |
  6. Terminatus

    There used to be a time, maybe 40-50 years ago, when a 593 lb tuna was considered small, and plentiful. It used to be that long line fishermen would often catch monster tuna over 1,000 pounds on a regular basis. These kings of the sea are disappearing before our eyes! When our world pop hits 12-15 billion in the next 100 years I hate to think what our planet will resemble....probably a big slab of concrete. Sad.

    January 5, 2012 at 12:42 pm | Report abuse |
    • SixDegrees

      Not gonna happen. Pretty much everyone who studies such things agrees that world population growth has already slowed dramatically and will peak by mid-century at around 8-9 billion, then decline thereafter as development pulls more people out of agricultural societies and poverty and birthrates continue to fall as a result.

      January 5, 2012 at 12:54 pm | Report abuse |
    • Leaf on the Wind

      Terminatus, did you get that from a history on tuna fishing? Cite your source; I'd be interested in reading about that.

      SixDegrees, I hope you're right.

      January 5, 2012 at 1:14 pm | Report abuse |
  7. Dennis Nedry

    This article is phony. The numbers are phony.

    With these phony numbers the flesh would clock out at over twelve hundred dollars a pound. If you don't like tuna, don't eat it. If you think they are being overfished, ask yourself: how are your "scientists" keeping track of how many there are?

    Phony, phony, phony.

    January 5, 2012 at 12:57 pm | Report abuse |
    • JDS

      Thanks, Holden, for that brilliant commentary.

      January 5, 2012 at 1:15 pm | Report abuse |
  8. stacie

    good job to the fisherman that caught this, he just made enough money to feed his family for a year off one fish!!! and i am sorry to all you vegiterians, when did the life of a fish become more valuable then that of a family. coudos to you!!

    January 5, 2012 at 12:58 pm | Report abuse |
    • Eric

      Feed his family for a year? Pfft, that's more money than many of us will make in a lifetime sadly.

      January 5, 2012 at 1:44 pm | Report abuse |
  9. humanbeing

    Rodan is hungry!

    January 5, 2012 at 1:11 pm | Report abuse |
  10. background

    How much for some of the girls in the background?

    January 5, 2012 at 1:11 pm | Report abuse |
    • mb2010a

      They probably smell like fish...

      January 5, 2012 at 2:51 pm | Report abuse |
  11. Allah

    mmmmmmmm – radioactive sushi!

    January 5, 2012 at 1:14 pm | Report abuse |
  12. rick santorumtwit... America's favorite frothy one

    Why in the world would anyone want a president whose name is synonymous with bung hole foam?

    January 5, 2012 at 1:19 pm | Report abuse |
    • Barack Hussein Obama

      why would anyone want a president whose name is confused with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein?

      January 5, 2012 at 1:36 pm | Report abuse |
    • Fred Evil

      BHO – Because the only people so easily confused, deserve to be. Santorum is a ridiculous t w a t, you can't be so obtuse as to not see that.

      January 5, 2012 at 1:38 pm | Report abuse |
    • rick santorumtwit... America's favorite frothy one

      BHO – The names you mention are as common in other parts of the world as "Smith" or"'Johnson" is here in the U.S.

      January 5, 2012 at 1:59 pm | Report abuse |
  13. LOL

    Very funny, made me laugh!

    January 5, 2012 at 1:20 pm | Report abuse |
  14. smartalec

    Life didn't get it. #readingcomprehension

    January 5, 2012 at 1:20 pm | Report abuse |
  15. alex

    i just knew some idiot would enter the room

    January 5, 2012 at 1:42 pm | Report abuse |
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