Endangered giant bluefin tuna fetches record $396,000 in Tokyo auction

The AP reports: A giant bluefin tuna fetched a record 32.49 million yen, or nearly $396,000, in the first auction of the year at the world's largest wholesale fish market in Japan.

The price for the 754-pound (342-kilogram) tuna beat the previous record set in 2001 when a 445-pound (202-kilogram) fish sold for 20.2 million yen at Tokyo's Tsukiji market.

Japan is the world's biggest consumer of seafood, with Japanese eating 80 percent of the Atlantic and Pacific bluefins caught. The two tuna species are the most sought-after by sushi lovers.
Wednesday's record-setting tuna was caught off Japan's northern island of Hokkaido.

The Telegraph adds:
In the last year, there have been several moves to ban or limit catches of tuna, with environmentalists warning that stocks of some species are already close to levels that would render the fish unable to reproduce sufficiently to survive.

Conservationists failed at last year's Convention of the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora to impose a ban on the international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna to preserve breeding stock, due primarily to vigorous lobbying by the Japanese government.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, however, has listed Southern and Atlantic bluefin tuna as endangered species.