A 593 pound Pacific bluefin tuna sold for $735,000 (56.49 million yen) in Tokyo's Tsukiji market on January 5, breaking the previous record price hit last year by over $260,000. The fish was purchased by Kiyoshi Kimura, operator of the 46-store Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain. Kimura stated he was willing to pay so much for the fish because he wanted to help Japan after a devastating tsunami and nuclear meltdown last year. “Japan has been through a lot the last year due to the disaster,” he said. “It needs to stay strong. That's what I tried to do and I ended up buying the most expensive one.” Kimura also said he wanted the bluefin sushi to stay in Japan. The IUCN Red List has stated the scare of extinction of the Pacific bluefin was ‘Least Concern', and overfishing has become a rising problem. Last year, researchers estimated that the current spawning biomass of Pacific bluefin was only 40-60 percent of its historic spawning biomass. The other two species of bluefin tuna, the Atlantic and Southern, are currently listed as critically endangered. Due to the dwindling population, environmentalists and animal rights groups are pushing for stricter regulations on fishing and catching the bluefin. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch lists warns consumers to avoid all bluefin tuna due to its scarcity and the methods used to catch the fish resulting in high levels of bycatch. There have also been health concerns raised about mercury and PCB levels in bluefin runa. “You know, good things like this are appreciated in the whole world,” said Hirotaka Higurashi, a 22-year-old male customer at Sushi-Zanmai, when asked about overfishing. “There is nothing we can do about it.” The Pacific bluefin tuna is a warm-blooded, predatory species of tuna that is migratory. A potential alternative is the Kindai tuna, a farmed bluefin tuna developed at the Fisheries Laboratory of Kinki University of Japan in 2002. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/GoxwT Tags: Bluefin Tuna, Japan Section: Animals, East Asia, Environment, Food
