A deep-pocketed restaurateur shelled out nearly $750,000 for a tuna at Japan’s Tsukiji fish market on Thursday, smashing the record price for a single bluefin.

The 269-kilogramme fish stood at an eye-popping 56.49 million yen ($736,500) when the hammer came down in the first auction of the year.

The figure dwarfs the previous high of 32.49 million yen paid at last year’s inaugural auction at Tsukiji, a huge working market in Tokyo.

A monster bluefin tuna sold for a record 396,000 dollars in the year’s first auction at the world’s biggest fish market in Tokyo Wednesday amid intense pre-dawn bidding.

The 342-kilogramme (752-pound) fish — caught off Japan‘s northern island of Hokkaido — fetched a winning bid of 32.49 million yen (396,000 dollars).

It was the highest such bid yet, topping the previous record of 20.02 million yen paid for a bluefin tuna in 2001, the officials said.

A monster tuna caught off Japan turned heads at a Tokyo fish market Friday, where the 445 kilogram (981 pound) bluefin – the biggest caught here since 1986 — sold for 3.2 million yen (36,700 dollars).

“Many of the people who work at the market have never seen a tuna that big,” said an official of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which runs the Tsukiji fish market, the world’s biggest seafood market.

A giant bluefin tuna fetched 16.3 million yen ($177,000) in an auction Tuesday at the world’s largest wholesale fish market in Japan.

The bluefin tuna weighs 232 kg – nearly four times as much as the average Japanese man.

It was caught off the northern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, in waters famed for high quality fish.

What does the world’s most expensive sushi taste like? Smooth, succulent and a little on the light side according to Yumiko Ono.

The Tokyo restaurant world was shocked last week when a 128 kilogram Japanese bluefin tuna fetched 9.63 million yen ($104,800) – the highest price paid for a bluefin tuna in eight years.

Two restaurants with distinctly different styles bid jointly at Tokyo’s first fish auction of the year, splitting both the cost and the fish.

This 282 pound Japanese bluefin tuna was purchased at auction for $100,000 at the first auction of the New Year on the Tokyo Metropolitan central Wholesale market, commonly known as the Tsukiji market. The price was about ten times the average price and the highest in nearly a decade.

Two sushi owners, one in Hong Kong and one in Japan, paid out for the large fish Monday. This is the first large fish Tokyo auction this year, which usually determines how the market will react over the course of the year. So, if that’s true, we’re in for a very stakes year.

Members of international tuna conservation organizations have agreed to cut their bluefin catch quota for 2009 by 20 percent to 22,000 tons which could mean more high prices this year.