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Saturday January 5, 12:11 PMTuna sold for 6 mil. yen at year's 1st auction on Tokyo fish market(Kyodo) _ Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market held the new year's first auction of tuna early Saturday, with a 276-kilogram bluefin tuna caught off Aomori Prefecture sold for a five-year high of 6.07 million yen amid tightening controls on catches and rising fuel costs for fishing boats.A Hong Kong-based sushi restaurant chain owner won the bluefin tuna with the highest price in the auction. Its price per kg came to 22,000 yen. The record-high price was 20.2 million yen, or 100,000 yen per kg, set in 2001 for a 202-kg tuna caught in the same waters off Oma, the northernmost town on Japan's main island. "I've never heard the highest price in the first auction of a year came from a person in Hong Kong," an auction participant said. The Hong Kong sushi chain has opened a restaurant in Tokyo. About 2,900 tuna caught at home and abroad were put on sale at the auction. After a bell rang to mark the start of the auction, loud voices announcing settlement prices were heard everywhere. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Japan, the world's biggest tuna-consuming country, to secure a stable supply of the fish. The international catch quota for bluefin and southern bluefin tuna has been gradually reduced to preserve tuna resources. Higher fuel costs following the record-breaking advance in oil prices have forced an increasing number of Japanese fishing boats to discontinue tuna catches. Tuna demand in other Asian countries, including rapidly growing China, is also rising rapidly. On the Tsukiji market, prices of tuna caught overseas seas have risen an average 20-30 percent from a year before partly because imports of cultured tuna from Croatia, Spain and other countries have dropped sharply since last fall. "Tuna shipments to Japan will be reduced," a market participant said. "If tuna prices remain high due to a fall in supplies, Japanese consumers will further shun the fish." |
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