TOKYO, Jan 6 (NNN-NHK) – A 212-kg bluefin tuna was sold for 36.04 million yen (about 271,500 U.S. dollars) in the first auction of the year, at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market, yesterday.
The most popular tuna at the new year auction, caught, off the northern Japan town of Oma, Aomori Prefecture, cost more than twice the top price at last year’s auction, 16.88 million yen for a 211-kg bluefin, but it came nowhere close to the record 333.6 million yen, fetched by a 278-kg bluefin tuna, in the 2019, first auction.
This year’s first auction started at around 5:10 a.m., with the customary sound of a handbell. Nearly 200 domestic wild tuna were put up for auction, where a few tunas weighing over 200 kg attracted a lot of attention.
The 212-kg fish was bought by Yamayuki, a Toyosu market intermediate wholesaler. This is the third year in a row Yamayuki won the most expensive bluefin tuna at the market’s first auction of the year.
