Tokyo: Prices for frozen bluefin tuna are falling in Japan this year-end season thanks to a glut of farmed bluefin tuna from the Mediterranean region, allowing consumers to enjoy the fatty and expensive fish at affordable prices.

At Tokyo’s Toyosu wholesale market earlier this month, frozen natural bluefin tuna was auctioned at around 2,800 yen per kilogram, down nearly 20 percent from a year earlier. The lower prices are because of “excessive domestic inventories of farmed bluefin tuna from the Mediterranean region, which competes (with natural bluefin tuna)” said an official of a wholesaler.

Mediterranean bluefin tuna is caught alive and fed in tanks in coastal countries in the region, making it high in fat. Japan’s imports of such bluefin tuna in 2022 rose 2.8-fold from the previous year to 782 tons, the highest in 10 years.

Production of farmed bluefin tuna there has remained strong this year, but imports have been curbed as “cold storage facilities in Japan are full,” an official of an importer said.

At the Toyosu market, wholesale prices of Mediterranean bluefin tuna were around 2,500 yen to 3,500 yen per kilogram in mid-December, down more than 30 percent from a year earlier.

Retail prices also went down. At outlets of major supermarket operator Aeon Co. in the Tokyo metropolitan area and elsewhere, blocks and slices of farmed tuna from Morocco and Spain are sold at prices about 30 percent lower than a year before. Popular “chutoro” medium-fat cuts of the fish were priced at around 800 yen per 100 grams in mid-December.

While seeing strong sales of such tuna products, Aeon plans to maintain the current prices until around March.

JIJI Press