Huge Tuna Fetches $176K

A gigantic bluefin tuna, weighing in at 512.8 pounds, sold for roughly $176,000 today in an auction in Japan, a sum not seen in nearly a decade. It was Japan’s first tuna auction of the year—amid rapidly declining bluefin stocks—yet it beat out the top price paid last year by 60%, the Times of London reports. The buyers were the same pair of restaurateurs who went in on that fish.

One owns Kyubey, a Michelin-starred restaurant near the auction site in Tokyo, while the other owns a Hong Kong sushi chain. Within hours of the auction, a chef at Kyubey said part of the fish had already been served to diners. The lucky consumer got a bargain, however; the restaurant wrote off the cost of the fish as an “engimono,” or talisman for new year luck.
(More bluefin tuna stories.)