Each January, the first bluefin tuna auction at Toyko's Tsukiji fish market commands some of the highest prices of the year.
But environmentalists who closely monitor the dwindling bluefin tuna stocks say this sends exactly the wrong signal to fishermen, especially those who are tempted to break international law to go after bluefin.
"We have a pretty significant overfishing problem with bluefin tuna," Lee Crockett, who directs the Pew Environment Group's bluefin tuna work, tells The Salt. "When you sell fish for this amount of money, that exacerbates those problems. You can bet fishermen all over the world are going to say, 'Boy, I'd like to sell fish for that amount of money.'"
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