The record New Year auction, Tsukiji to Toyosu, bluefin collapse and recovery, and the tuna in the can.
At the first auction of 2026 at Tokyo's Toyosu market, a 243-kilogram Pacific bluefin caught off Oma sold for 510 million yen, about 3.2 million dollars, a record. The price is a publicity event more than a market price: ordinary bluefin sells for a small fraction of that per kilogram.
Why would a restaurant pay millions for one fish?
Tsukiji in central Tokyo was the world's largest fish market from 1935. In October 2018 it moved to a new site at Toyosu with closed, temperature-controlled halls. The move shows how a food market is also urban infrastructure: land, transport, cold chains and public health.
What does a city need to move a market that feeds millions?
By 2014 scientists estimated the Pacific bluefin spawning stock had fallen to under 3 percent of its unfished size (estimate). Catch limits agreed by Pacific nations followed, and the 2024 assessment found it had rebuilt above the 20 percent target years early (estimate). Atlantic bluefin has recovered under similar quotas.
What made countries that compete for fish agree to catch less?
Bluefin is rare and expensive. Most of the world's tuna catch, roughly 5 million tonnes a year (estimate), is skipjack and yellowfin, much of it canned in Thailand, Ecuador and other processing hubs. A can of tuna and a slice of bluefin sushi come from very different fisheries and price systems.
Why is one tuna sold by the can and another by the slice?