Bluefin Sold At USD 36,500 At Tokyo Fish Market’s First Auctionff

A 206.6 kilogram Bluefin tuna caught off Aomori Prefecture was sold for Yen 4.13 million (USD 36,500) Friday in the year's first auction at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market, a relatively low price amid growing concerns in Japan over higher prices due to reduced international catch quotas.

The price of the tuna came to about 20,000 yen per kg, the same as the highest bid for a 191-kg tuna sold for 3.82 million yen a year earlier at the Tsukiji market, where tuna caught in domestic waters and raised in farms overseas were auctioned.

The price is far lower than the record-high 20.2 million yen, or 100,000 yen per kg, fetched in 2001 for a 202-kg tuna caught in the same waters off Oma, the northernmost town on Japan’s main island in 2001.

”The prices (of tuna) settled at a more reasonable level than I had expected,” a trader said as food wholesale markets opened Friday morning for business for the new year across Japan, the world’s largest tuna consumer.

Tsukiji market saw ample tuna supplies from both at home and abroad despite increasing difficulties in securing international tuna stocks due to the new quotas.

New catch quotas aiming to preserve tuna have combined with the growing popularity of tuna worldwide to send their prices skyrocketing.

But cultured tuna were shipped by air from several nations around the world, including Australia, Mexico and United States, and plenty of tuna were caught domestically, producing a fair supply overall.

Under the new quotas, the Japanese catch of southern Bluefin tuna has been limited to 3,000 tons over the next five years from around 6,000 tons in 2006.