29 July 2005
Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea has only sold 635kg of Bigeye and Yellowfin tuna at Tokyo’s world famous tsukiji fish market since 2003.
Tokyo metropolitan government documents showed only 541kg of Bigeye and 94kg of Yellowfin tuna caught in PNG waters were sold at the market in 2003.
The market did not have any records for last year of selling both tuna species caught in PNG waters.
Japanese find Bigeye attractive for the local sashimi market as they swim at greater depths then Skipjack and Yellowfin and have more fat that insulate them from cold water.
January 2003 was the only month of that year which did not see any PNG-caught Bigeye being auctioned at Tsukiji though sales of the PNG-caught tuna species peaked at 100kg in August and dropped to 35kg by December of that year.
Marshall Islands was the only country in the Pacific (excluding Aust-ralia and New Zealand) that had more than 1000kg of Bigeye sold at Tsukiji when 1970kg of the tuna species went under the hammer in 2003.
No PNG-caught Yellowfin was sold in the months of January, February and April 2003. May saw the highest number of PNG-caught Yellowfin, 23, being sold at Tsukiji.
Australia was the only country in the Pacific that had more than 100kg of Yellowfin auctioned in 2003 with 887kg.
Yellowfin, Bluefin and Bigeye are the main tuna species sold at the Tsukiji fish market.
Prices have averaged Japanese yen 100,000 (K2486.52) per kilogram at the market in the past. However, the price for tuna since the first auction was held on January 5 this year has been Japanese yen 25,000 (K621.63) per kilogram.
