Tuna weighing as much as a grizzly bear sells for $2.1 million in Japan

A bluefin tuna sold for $US1.3 million ($2.1 million) at a predawn auction in Tokyo on Sunday, making it one of the most expensive tuna to be sold in the history of sushi.

The 275-kilogram fish, equivalent in weight to a typical male grizzly bear, was caught off the coast of Oma in northern Japan’s Aomori prefecture on Saturday morning, according to Japan’s Kyodo News agency. The fish was sold to a Michelin-starred Japanese sushi restaurant chain for 207 million yen ($2.1 million), the Onodera Group said in a statement about its winning bid.

The first auction of the year at Tokyo’s Toyosu Market – one of the world’s largest wholesale fish markets – typically reels in eye-watering prices.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported that the auction began soon after 5am, with frozen and fresh tuna attracting bids from the country and around the world. This year, the prize tuna fetched over $3373 per 450 grams – making for some extremely expensive sashimi slices.

“It was as fat as a cow,” 73-year-old fisherman Masahiro Takeuchi told reporters in Oma, Kyodo News reported, recalling the moment he saw the giant tuna caught on a longline.

Onodera said it bought the fish with the co-operation of seafood wholesaler Yamayuk and intends to make it available on sushi menus at 13 of its restaurants. It marked the fifth consecutive year in which the sushi group won the auction, it added.

Photographs showed sushi chefs hauling the gigantic fish onto a sushi counter and preparing the tuna into slices to be served at a Tokyo branch of the Onodera sushi chain.

Oma tuna, a form of Pacific bluefin, is highly prized by sushi restaurateurs as the “black diamond” of tuna fish. A diet of squid and fatty saury fish, combined with its colder-water habitat, gives the tuna a unique balance of fat that makes it a favoured sashimi ingredient.