The owner of a Japanese sushi restaurant chain on Saturday set a record by paying more than $3 million for a bluefin tuna and then conceded that maybe he paid a little too much.
“The tuna looks so tasty and very fresh, but I think I did too much,” Kimura told reporters outside the market later.
LINK (via: Reuters)
Unreality check: I heard in a BBC radio report a couple of days ago that a bluefin of that size normally fetches $60,000 at auction in Japan – still a very big price to swim the world’s oceans with on your head. We have some people wanting to start a catch and release bluefin operation off the west coast of Britain at present; I have my qualms and concerns, for, whilst they might be perfectly fine and dandy and will offer little threat to the lives of a long-absent, now slowly returning Atlantic bluefin tuna population, the piratical freelancers and Big in Japan tuna-smugglers who will doubtless follow their little, avowedly sportfishing for science and so completely virtuous, C&R fleet most certainly will not. Some wild and threatened things, in my opinion, are best left well alone and be allowed to continue to increase and prosper through benign neglect.