A huge bluefin tuna was sold for US$176,000 in the first auction of the year at a Tokyo fish market yesterday, amid growing pressure on Japan to help save the threatened fish.
The 232.6kg bluefin tuna — caught off Japan’s northern region of Aomori — fetched a winning bid of ¥16.28 million (US$176,000), said an official at the Tsukiji fish market.
It was the second-biggest such bid yet, after a record ¥20.02 million paid for a bluefin tuna in 2001, the official said.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
The fish was bought by a pair of Japanese and Hong Kong sushi restaurant owners who had also made a joint top bid for a bluefin tuna in the first auction of last year at Tsukiji, the world’s biggest fish market.
“I want to make an impact on the Japanese and Hong Kong economies by buying the highest-priced tuna,” the Sankei Shimbun daily’s Web site quoted the Hong Kong sushi restaurant owner as saying.
The auction came amid worries among Japanese, the world’s biggest consumers of bluefin tuna, about growing calls for a trade ban for the fish, which environmentalists warn is on its way to extinction.
In a move to protect the species, an international body meeting in Brazil in November agreed to cut the allowable bluefin tuna catch in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean by about 40 percent this year compared with last year.
Japan, which consumes more than 80 percent of tuna caught in the Mediterranean, endorsed the proposal and agreed to reduce its own catch quota accordingly.
“Tuna is a precious food, which is the core of Japanese food culture,” said Keiichi Suzuki, president of the Tsukiji fish market, where 2,280 tuna fish were auctioned yesterday.
“We would like to provide a stable supply while saving resources,” he said as a crowd of bidders clapped to celebrate this year’s first auction, with an opening bell echoing through the pre-dawn market.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS