Fish as Big as a Grizzly Sells for $1.3M

It's as long as a motorcycle and weighs just as much, but it sold for far more. The annual new year auction of a bluefin tuna at Tokyo's Toyosu market went to a familiar name on Sunday: Michelin-starred sushi chain operator the Onodera Group, which won the auction for its fifth straight year. The price was more of an outlier. At 207 million yen or $1,316,835, auction organizers say it's the second-highest bid recorded since the event's 1999 start. The Washington Post reports the 608-pound fish—that's about the weight of a male grizzly bear, the paper notes—was caught Saturday morning off Oma.

Oma tuna, as the Pacific bluefin is known, is called the "black diamond" of tuna thanks to the "unique balance of fat" it has due to the colder waters it inhabits and its diet of squid and fatty saury fish, per the Post. Onodera, which bought the fish in partnership with seafood wholesaler Yamayuki, will offer the tuna to its conveyor-belt diners for 1,160 yen (about $7.50), with a limit of two pieces per person, reports Kyodo News. NBC News reports the top bid ever recorded was 333.6 million yen ($3.1 million at the time) paid in 2019, but after the pandemic curtailed dining out, prices dropped. (The man who bought that $3.1 million fish expressed some regret.)