In 2013, Kiyoshi Kimura, the owner of a Japanese sushi restaurant chain, paid $1.76 million for the first bluefin at Tsukiji, which weighed 489 pounds. Kimura had paid $736,000—a world-record price at the time—for the first tuna of 2012. That fish weighed 593 pounds. It's no surprise, then, that journalists were steeling themselves for what was sure to come on January 4, 2014: If the past decade's trend in pricing continued, this year's first tuna would surely fetch more than a million dollars. But the Tsukiji fish market bucked tradition this weekend and sold its first tuna to Kimura, yet again, for a mere $70,000. That's still way more money than most bluefin go for in Japan. But compared to what everyone was expecting—an extravagant sum to start off the new year and remind us that these are the most prized fish in the sea—that's one crazy cheap tuna. Although the significance of the almost-$2 million tuna in 2013 was recognized worldwide, not everyone agreed on what that said about the actual value of global tuna stocks.

It was tempting to see the price surge as a function of the fish's rarity, but then why weren't restaurants raising the prices of the bluefin dishes on their menus?jiro dreams of sushi watch online youtubeAndrew David Thaler, who writes about the ocean on his blog Southern Fried Science, had this to say about the many factors at play in the Tsukiji auction last January:sushi cat 3 gry I’m certain that we’ll see this number presented as an argument against bluefin tuna fishing, as an example of an industry out-of-control, and as a symbol of how ruthlessly we'll hunt the last few members of a species to put on our dinner plates. sushi delivery london putney

These issues are reflected in the tuna market, but I want to urge caution in drawing too many conclusions from this record breaking number.ninja sushi menu arlington There are several issues in play at the first tuna auction of the year, and only some of them relate to the tuna fishery. yo sushi menu bentoAmong the patrons of the Tsukiji fish auction, it is considered an honor to buy the first bluefin of the new years, and bidding wars reflect this fight for status. sushi cat 3 graThe massive international headlines that follow the purchase of such a fish is free advertising for the winner. yo sushi takeaway edinburghAs many auction-goers know, landing a high, early win is a way of marking your territory and letting your competitors know that you have the bankroll to push them out of a bidding war.

If $1.8 million is actually what this fish is worth to the consumer, it would sell for a hefty $345 at the dinner table, minimum. The owner, Kiyoshi Kimura, reports that the tuna will be sold at a huge loss–about $4.60 per serving. All three species of bluefin tuna are currently overfished, and over the last few years attempts to protect bluefin tuna have been thwarted by fishing interests in Japan, New Zealand, the United States, and Mediterranean countries, among others. While this record breaking sale should serve a clarion call for increased scrutiny of the global tuna trade, it does not accurately reflect the market value of the fish. What should we make of the dramatic nosedive in bluefin bidding at this year's auction? To answer that, we need to understand how this species rose to such prestige in the first place.  In the 1960s, no one wanted bluefin. In the United States, the fish sold for pennies per pound, and it was usually ground up for cat food. Japan fished for it, but few people there liked the bluefin's bloody, fatty meat.

Then sushi bars started cropping up in America, and Americans developed a taste for toro—the prime meat of the bluefin's belly. By the 1970s, the Japanese had also developed a taste for bluefin. All of a sudden, bluefin was one of the most sought-after fish not only by Japanese fishermen but also by American and Canadian ones. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, between 1970 and 1990 fishing for bluefin in the Western Atlantic increased by more than 2,000 percent. The average price paid to Atlantic fishermen for bluefin exported to Japan rose by 10,000 percent. And it was mostly all being exported to Japan. Even today, a bluefin caught off the coast of New Hampshire will be shipped off to Tokyo before ending up on sushi plates somewhere else.  The graph above was published in a 2013 stock assessment by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the North Pacific Ocean. It was this stock assessment that prompted The Pew Charitable Trusts to announce, just days after Kimura bought his tuna for $1.76 million, that global bluefin tuna stock has declined by 96.4 percent from pre-1950 levels.

For many North Americans, their first introduction to sushi was most likely the ubiquitous California Roll. Over the last few decades, what was once a rare food has spread in popularity to the point where variations on the dish can be found everywhere from high-end sushi restaurants to just about every grocery store chain. Now, the chef credited with creating the California Roll is being granted one of Japan’s highest honors: cultural ambassador. He becomes just one of a handful of foreigners who have been given the title, CBC News reports. If you haven’t sampled a California Roll yourself, it’s a pretty simple recipe: sushi rice, dried seaweed, a bite of avocado, a fair-sized chunk of crab, and occasionally a few slivers of cucumber or radish. While it may be far from the fanciest dish on the menu, it is a surprisingly important one, as some credit its creation with helping popularize sushi in the United States, Nick Rose writes for Munchies. But although some sushi snobs may turn their nose down at the commonplace California Roll as inauthentic, that was never its creator’s intention.

When sushi chef Hidekazu Tojo opened his first restaurant in Vancouver in 1971, sushi was not nearly as ubiquitous on the menu as it is today. Few Canadians and Americans had a taste for hand rolls and sashimi, and Tojo quickly realized he needed to adjust his menu to suit local taste buds. Not only did he struggle to find sushi-grade fish for his kitchen, but he had to fight against his customers’ reluctance to try new things, Madeleine White reports for The Globe and Mail. “Another thing Western people did not eat was seaweed, so I tried to hide it. I made the roll inside out. People loved it,” Tojo tells White. “I was against Japanese tradition with the inside-out roll, but I liked it, and my customers liked it. And so it spread all over – even into Japan.” As unorthodox as Tojo’s creation may be, it still draws on traditional Japanese culinary techniques and has arguably helped raise the profile of Japanese food around the world. After decades of making the iconic sushi rolls, Tojo is becoming one of only 13 overseas ambassadors for Japanese cuisine, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports.