Download A bluefin tuna caught off northern Japan has been snapped up at auction for a record 396,000 US dollars or 42 US dollars for every slice of sashimi.
But while some people rub their hands at the prospect of huge prices for tuna, others warn that it's a sign that tuna stocks are crashing.
Mark Willacy, North Asia correspondent for Radio Australia reports.
The bluefin had barely been dead 12 hours.
Caught on a long-line off Japan's northern island of Hokkaido it had been rushed down to Tokyo by plane overnight and was on the block before dawn for the first auction of the year at the city's massive Tsukiji market.
A 340-kilogram goliath, the tuna was a magnificent specimen of a dwindling species known here as the black diamond because of its scarcity.
As the auction heated up buyers watched as the bidding reached a frenzy.
Eventually a winner emerged.
Joining forces the owner of a Hong Kong sushi chain and the proprietor of a sashimi restaurant in Tokyo's posh Ginza district offered the winning bid - 396,000 dollars.
Standing over his prize sushi chain owner Ricky Cheng said he was prepared to pay big money for such a magnificent fish.
“People in Hong Kong and China think Japanese tunas are the best. I'm happy I could buy the bluefin.”
His co-bidder Japanese sushi master Yosuke Imada also believes the bluefin is worth its 400,000 dollars price tag.
“I had the New Year's luck to get the tuna in the year's first auction though it was expensive.”
In a country which scoffs down about three-quarters of the world's bluefin tuna catch this was big news.
“A bluefin tuna has fetched a record price in the year's first auction at Tokyo's Tsukiji market, the biggest wholesale fish market in Japan.”
And within hours of being auctioned off the bluefin was being sliced into sashimi and sold in Tokyo.
“It's so good that my hand was shaking as I was putting the sashimi to my mouth," says this woman.
While many in the industry are rubbing their hands together at the thought of rising tuna prices, others see it as a sign of the fish's decline.
"The custom of eating raw fish is spreading throughout the world," says auction manager Yoshinari Sekimoto. "So it's no longer an era in which Japan is consuming all of the limited supply of tuna," he says.
So not only are the Japanese continuing to eat more tuna but now the Chinese have a taste for its juicy flesh in their sushi and sashimi.
But decades of over-fishing have caused global tuna stocks to crash with some Western countries calling for a trade ban on the Atlantic bluefin tuna.
It may fetch big money on the auctioneer's block but for the black diamond the price could be extinction.