Bluefin Tuna sells for record $396,000

The record price was paid for a 754 pound bluefin tuna -- roughly $526 a pound -- that will be served up as sushi to customers in Tokyo and Hong Kong. High-end Japanese sushi restaurant Kyubey split the cost. Owner Yosuke Imada admitted "he went a little over budget."

The giant tuna was caught off the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido and was one of 538 shipped in from around the world for the first auction of the year at Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market where tuna are known to fetch high prices. “Good tuna is really selling to people in Hong Kong and China and this is a really good fish.”

The fish are the most popular among sushi connoisseurs, and sushi made from the premium fatty bluefin can cost about $24 a piece at some Japanese restaurants. The Japanese are the world’s biggest seafood consumers and eat 80% of all bluefin caught in the Atlantic and Pacific. In November, world conservation watchdogs agreed to reduce by 4% the 13,5000-tonne yearly bluefin fishing quota in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.

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