Calgary restaurants pay $25,000 for giant tuna

Two restaurants in landlocked Calgary are featuring a massive bluefin tuna caught off the coast of P.E.I. last week. The prized fish are usually shipped directly to Japan.

Maurizio Terrigno, owner of Osteria de Medici, and Aki Fujita, co-owner of Zen 8, spent $25,000 to bring the fish weighing more than544 kilograms, or 1,200 poundsto Alberta.

"Call me crazy, I don't know," Terrigno told CBC News on Monday. "A fish like this comes around once in a lifetime, literally."

The bluefin was caught last Thursday as part of a 40-tonne catch offPrince Edward Island. The season lasted four days after the summer quota was met; the fishery will reopen on Oct. 5.

"The product is rarely ever used in Canada. So we actually had a problem shipping it to Calgary because we were unable to filet it...to send it over here, because it came in one big piece," said Terrigno.

The tunaended up at City Fish in Calgary, where the fishmonger is helping to cut it up.

Osteria de Medici, an Italian restaurant, and Zen 8, a sushi establishment, willserve the bluefin this week.

Bluefin tuna is a precious commodity, especially in Japan where the rich, red flesh is particularly savoured. But the fish's popularity has led to overfishing and many sustainable groups calling on consumers to avoid it.

In January, two sushi bar owners paid more than $125,000 for a 128-kilogram Japanese bluefin tuna at a Tokyo fish auction.

Hire Inoue, Zen 8's co-owner, saidTuesdaythe bluefin tuna sushi is going quickly.

"We're very fortunate to get that good quality of bluefin and the pieces we're getting [are] really a good deal. In Japan you probably spend somewhere [between] $10 to $20 for a piece just the one piecefor bluefin tuna belly but we are selling it here atZen 8for only$4.90 a piece," Inoue said.