Bluefin Tuna fetches $614,000 at auction

In what could be the last New Year's auction at Tokyo's famed Tsukiji fish market, the owner of the Sushizanmai restaurant chain yesterday paid top price for a single fish, forking over more than $600,000 for a Pacific bluefin tuna.

For the sixth straight year, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Corp., which owns the Sushizanmai chain, had the winning bid, paying 72 million yen ($614,000) for a 212 kilogram (467 pound) Pacific bluefin tuna -- a species experts warn is being overfished.

That was well above last year's winning bid of 14 million yen, but half the record 155 million yen paid in 2013.