Auction in Tokyo Sees Record-breaking Sale of Massive Tuna Fish for Nearly $800,000

At Tokyo’s largest fish market, the most expensive piece of seafood ever sold was a bluefin tuna.

The massive bluefin tuna, weighing nearly 525 pounds, was auctioned on the first business day of 2024.

It was acquired by seafood wholesaler Yamayuki and a sushi chain for close to $800,000.

Yamayuki and the sushi chain Onodera group have now purchased the market’s most expensive fish of the new season for four consecutive years.

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“If we were going to do it, we wanted to win,” Yamayuki president Yukitaka Yamaguchi told reporters after the conclusion of the auction.

The tuna, caught off the coast of Aomori Prefecture, will be served as sushi at Onodera, a Michelin-starred sushi restaurant in Tokyo’s ritzy Ginza district, according to The Japan Times.

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The sale of the tuna marked the fourth-highest sale since recordkeeping began in 1999. It was also the highest price paid for a tuna at the bustling Toyosu Fish Market since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tuna sold for more than triple the price of the most expensive fish sold at the first-of-the-year auction in 2023, sparking hopes of a market rebound after the pandemic put downward pressure on fish prices alongside Japanese tourism and restaurant business.

The record for the highest fish sale was set in 2019 when Kiyoshi “Tuna King” Kimura, a Japanese sushi restaurant chain owner, paid 333.6 million yen ($3.1 million) for a 613-pound bluefin at the annual auction.

He later confessed to reporters that he had paid five times more than what he had anticipated.

“The tuna looks so tasty and very fresh, but I think I did too much,” Kimura said outside the market after the 2019 auction.