Bluefin Tuna

A story in the news today has provoked a lesson idea. 

I am taking most of my text from The Daily Telegraph, 5Jan13, but it also appeared elsewhere.

A bluefin tuna was sold at auction in Japan in January 2013 for £1.09 million.

The winning bidder, president of the Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, said “the price was a bit high”.

I have got the following on a sheet/PPT for pupils to read:

From The Daily Telegraph:In the year's first auction at Tokyo's sprawling Tsukiji fish market, the 489-pound tuna caught off northeastern Japan sold for the record price of £1.09 million, said Ryoji Yagi, a market official. 

But with a single mouthful-sized piece of sashimi weighing around 1oz, the record breaking tuna is worth around £??? per bite. 

Japanese eat 80 per cent of the bluefin tuna caught worldwide, and much of the global catch is shipped to Japan for consumption. 

The price works out to a stunning 700,000 yen per kilogram. 

In November, the 48 member nations of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICCAT, voted to maintain strict catch limits on the species, although some countries argued for higher limits. The quota will be allowed to rise slightly from 12,900 metric tons a year to 13,500. 

From Wikipedia: At maturity it is about 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) long and weighs about 60 kg (130 lb)

I thought I would then ask the pupils what things we can work out and what information they would need to be able to do this.

Here are the ideas I have had:

•       How much it weighs in kg.

•       The exchange rate between the yen (¥) and the pound sterling (£).

•       How much does a 1oz serving of the tuna cost?

•       How many tonnes of tuna are eaten in Japan each year?

•       How many tuna fish is that?

•       What is the percentage increase in the amount of tuna that can be caught next year?

•       How many times heavier than me is the fish?

•       Any others?

And the information I think the pupils might need?  Conversion between different units:

Imperial:

1 stone = 14 lb (pounds)

1 lb = 16 oz (ounces)

Metric:

1kg = 1000g

1 tonne = 1000kg

Conversion:

1 kg ≈ 2.2 lb

What are the benefits of this activity?

I will use it as a starter with Yr 10.  It is loosely a functional problem, but will involve not only extracting information from the newspaper article but also being creative to decide what we could work out.  It should also allow them to revise metric/imperial units of weight.

It might also happen that some pupils will think of other things they want to work out and will then need to find out more background information (for example, if they want to know how much tuna is consumed per person on average in Japan each year they will need the rough population of Japan).

There are also a few practical issues for us to consider.  Can we just divide the cost of the fish by its weight to work out the price per kg (or per lb or per oz) or do we need to allow for bones, skin, internal organs, etc (or do some of these get eaten as well?).

Resources are on TES.