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Prices For Bluefin Tuna Increasing

  • Category:Shopping
TOKYO (Jiji Press) — Prices for bluefin tuna from the vicinity of the Tsugaru Strait, including those from Oma, Aomori Prefecture, have been moving at higher levels in December.

Supplies have been recovering in December after staying at low levels due to new curbs on catches in the area.

The number of bluefin tuna from the strait that arrived at Tokyo’s main fish market from the beginning of December through Friday totaled some 340, up nearly 20 percent from the year-before level.

The Tsugaru Strait normally enters high season for the popular fish in late autumn.

But in 2018, catches remained substantially below year-before levels until late November to save quotas for the year-end and the beginning of the New Year, when prices tend to rise.

Large, fatty tuna are particularly popular, fetching high prices ranging from ¥20,000 to ¥30,000 per kilogram after mid-December. A veteran bidder said bid prices are about 40 percent higher than the previous year.
The first bluefin tuna auction for 2019, set for Jan. 5, at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market may draw extremely high prices, depending on arrivals.

Toyosu replaced Tsukiji as Tokyo’s main wholesale food market in October.

Local fishermen are now working to catch fish for the first shipments of the New Year. Expected bad weather through the beginning of the year could lead to tight supplies, however.

Some say the situation is similar to that in 2013, when a bluefin tuna from Oma fetched a record price of ¥155.4 million at the New Year auction amid extreme short supplies.

One market player says the price could shoot up to celebrate the debut New Year auction of the Toyosu market.
 

 

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