The Most Expensive Koi Fish In The World!

I've often wondered why koi carp are so

expensive

, but I didn't look into it until recently when I heard that the

world

's

most

expensive

live

fish

sold at auction for £1.8m or £1.4m. Okay but it's just ridiculous, how the hell can a

fish

be worth so much, it's about time I tried to find out my name is Carl Smith and as a fisherman I get to see fish all the time and the different species and their behaviors are fascinating. I also have fish at home in a tank but also in my pond I have a small goldfish which I bought for two pounds and also some koi karp which cost between £35 and £50 each.

Now I love my koi and they are very beautiful, but what is the huge difference in price? The history of the koi begins with the wild carp of Asia. The Japanese called these wild carp magoy. The colorful varieties of koi that exist today originated in the Yamakoshi Mountains, where residents noticed natural color mutations in the normally brown magoy. Originally they kept carp as an alternative food. source as they could grow rice and keep carp in ponds of similar nature when these black or brown magoy showed signs of color mutation, the more colorful specimens were selectively bred to produce fish with more vibrant and varied colors, the Japanese called these colorful Nishikigoi carp, which translates to swimming or being a living jewel In Japan, koi are considered a symbol of love and friendship and last year were recognized as the country's national fish.

We can't be sure exactly when selective breeding of koi began, but what we do know is Their popularity grew around 1900, when they were exhibited in Tokyo for the first time. This marked the beginning of fishermen beginning to value koi around the

world

to learn more and delve a little deeper into the world of this colorful carp. I decided to book myself on a koi buying trip with an aquatic retailer now I had absolutely no intention of purchasing a fish, plus they are very expensive, but the trip would be my way of seeing koi breeding facilities up close and getting started. to understand why.

These fish are highly valued, after some research I found Wesley who runs Causeway Koi. One phone call later, I was booked on the trip and I'm looking forward to the adventure. I'm Wesley Stewart and I'm a koi dealer. I have a shop called Causeway Koi, which is a booming port on the north coast of Northern Ireland. Our flight was from London to Tokyo, although upon arriving at the airport we were quite worried about the storm that was raging outside. Many flights were cancelled, including those before and after our plane. was delayed and that gave us the opportunity to meet Wesley and his clients who were joining us on this trip.

Well, there's a pretty local guy to us here. Chris, he's coming on the trip and we had Cormac and Sean from the Republic. from Ireland who are also coming, they could ask me to get them the fish, but for many people it is an aspiration to go to Japan, it is the birthplace of the hall, finally the call came, the flight is actually going, we boarded and then took off . With strong winds making the journey harrowing and bumpy, the flight time was around 11 hours and I actually slept

most

of the way, no doubt dreaming of the biggest and most impressive tent in the world.

We had arrived in the capital of Tokyo, Japan, this is the most densely populated city in the world, with 38 million people living within the Tokyo metropolitan area, which is more than four times the population of Greater London or equal to Los Angeles and New York added, surprisingly, although the city is not overrun by cars and has an incredibly low crime rate and the streets are very clean I am now someone who enjoys a little peace and quiet and that is probably why I lean towards fishing and the outdoors, so for me Tokyo was a little overwhelming, that said there were little glimpses of calm. inside the intricate gardens of the city that simulate the mountainous and wild part of Japan.

I have been interested in the Japanese garden since I did a school project on them when I was 14 years old. It was surprising that after all those years I now had the opportunity to actually see them, of course Koicap is synonymous with Japanese gardens and there are some on display in these ponds in the city. Our time in Tokyo had the perfect balance of historical Japanese culture mixed with the excitement of an almost futuristic city, but it wasn't. the crowd turns on the music or even the gardens they had come to because they were koi, so wesley guided us to a train bound for aegea in northwest japan.

Aegea is a city near the Yamakoshi Mountains where the koi karp originated and somewhere I really wanted to visit my first point of visit was nishikigoi no sato or the koi village. This is a museum dedicated to educating people about koi. This is really amazing. They are so beautiful to watch, so calm and docile, probably more so than any other fish I have ever met. I have seen many different species in aquariums, tanks and ponds, but the koi carp is definitely the friendliest and gentlest of all, of course, I was very excited to see so many large, colorful koi so early in my trip, a particularly memorable fish. a large brown one that was especially greedy while I was in the museum I learned that to breed a quality koi carp the selection process is long and difficult because for every valuable fish there are hundreds of thousands with little or no value the skill of the breeders is I choose the Healthiest and most promising baby fish to grow, so I'm here at the koi museum in ogia.

I haven't been in this city for long, but I've already realized that these fish are not just pets for the people who live here. For many of them, these cars are their livelihood in almost every store in the city. that we have been to, in all the restaurants and cafes. There are pictures of koi on the walls, they paint them, they have koi stickers everywhere, it certainly looks like the koi. The car is a very dominant aspect of people's lives here and that is why tomorrow we will visit the breeders, the same people who make these fish in the mountains, before leaving the museum.

I noticed this graph indicating how different the crossovers are. attributes over time produce the different varieties of koi. Now I was very excited for the next day's adventure. We checked into our hotel room before heading out to eat at a characterful little restaurant to have access to the koi farmers' ponds. Wesley had received help from a man named Martin Well, I have been coming to Japan since 1981, but in 2001 I started a company with my colleague Renee Villa called Japan Koi Export and we specialized in bringing people to Japan to select koi from breeders and companies. farms and then we ship. them to their destinations around the world Renee and Martin picked us up in the morning and we traveled as a group towards the mountains.

The first destination was the hosokai koi farm, which Wesley knows well and has visited many times. I was so excited to finally set foot. In a koi farmer's workplace, these ponds are where the fish are kept during the winter, where they are safe and warm, away from predators and icy conditions. These ponds also offer a perfect place to display fish to potential buyers like Wesley. Well of course I expected I see a lot of koi in Japan but not that many as hosokai made drinks for the group where they caught a fish and put it in a container for a closer look as you can imagine it's easy to get carried away and buy fish from the beginning, but There are over 100 koi farmers in Ghata Prefecture and we intended to visit a few more before deciding to buy any fish.

To my surprise, I discovered that there are over 100 different varieties of koi, so I won't list them all now. but here is a brief introduction there is a droopy koi with a blue body and a red base of the pectoral fins deutz a german cup with very few or no scales ogon a koi of a color that usually comes in yellow or white tancho a white fish with a red circle on its head similar to the one on the Japanese flag chagoi which are light brown and shisui which are a cross between asagi and deuts, of course I was curious about the more expensive varieties of koi, the kahaku sanki and showa varieties They are in a group known as gosanki, these are fish that can compete for the title of grand champion at a koi show, but we will look at koi shows a little later in this movie, it was just our first full day in negata and we had seen a lot.

I think my first impression was that the area was very clean, the locals were polite, I saw that it was a conversation with a robot. The doors and cars were very small and the bathrooms were quite technical. We went to 7-eleven for lunch and were surprised by the unusual choice. of food strawberry sandwiches, among other things, but not what I was used to my second lunch dish, the world's largest fish stick, look it's not fish, we visited a variety of different koi farmers over the next three days and one thing caught my attention. It was the large number of fish in what were relatively small ponds.

Martin explained to me that these fish only spend a short period of time in these ponds, as soon as the snow melts and the weather improves, the fish are released into mud ponds, these are larger clay ponds. -Constructed ponds that provide a perfect home for koi where they can feast on natural foods such as crayfish and bloodworms. The Japanese have learned that fish grow bigger and healthier if you give them the space and quality of water that these mud ponds provide. I saw so many. of these mud ponds scattered throughout the mountain valleys and in fact one of the breeders we visited, Marissa, is the largest producer of koi karp in the area and that breeder has over 1,000 mud ponds, what What would you say if I bought one there?

Don't put words, please buy one, you love me too. I have seen a few koi farmers, but next up was a place where I would see much larger and much more expensive fish, so this is the dainichi koi farm. I'm not entirely satisfied. I'm sure I pronounced it right, but apparently this is one of the three main koi farms in all of Japan and I think I can understand why we looked at a couple of the first groups and saw bigger koi than I've ever seen before in my life. life these things are wide we're leaving, we're leaving, yes, okay, let's go to the big house, okay, where the big fish don't shut up, eh, they're the big fish, how big are they?

The largest, Danichi Koi Farm is responsible for numerous grand champion winning fish and their jumbo kahaku pond was very impressive, to say the least. I heard that some of the fish in this pond actually cost over four hundred thousand pounds each, but why those fish? much more expensive than those we had seen in the previous ponds, this would become clear a little later in the week. The first part of why koi are so expensive compared to other fish, for example, was starting to become clear when looking at koi. breeders facilities, it was easy to see that this is a very specialized job with an immense amount of money, knowledge and effort required to successfully breed and grow koi.

Perfect water quality is essential and I had seen the immense investment breeders make to provide it. fish with clean water, fortunately they have clean water flowing from the mountains surrounding their farms, however it was not as simple as filling their ponds with a large number of fish that are kept inside during the winter, breeders need to filter their ponds to maintain them. Cleaning them and removing fish waste. Heating was also present in many of the ponds, allowing for car growth and health. Food for the fish was another expense and the Japanese did not skimp on costs when selecting good all-round nutrition.

For your fish, even with these factors applied, the incredible cost of some koi carp didn't add up. I think there must be something more to this, something more than meets the eye, between September and December, it's time for koi farmers to bring their fish back indoors. For the cold winter, this means harvesting its many mud ponds and discovering if the fish have grown and developed to successfully catch them. A long net is dragged around the perimeter of the drained pond as it is tightened, the fish becoming more visible until the time comes. to catch them for the farmers, the harvest is an exciting but also stressful time, each fish must be recorded and accounted for in case some have been lost to predators, the fish are transported to a waiting truck with clean water and oxygenated and then driven back to the farm, what I never realized is that over time the koi can change quite a bit, some colors can fade, other colors can appear, the patterns can change slightly and in some extreme cases, the fish can change variety completely at this point in my trip.

I had literally seenmillions of koi and some big ones too and I couldn't help but think how they are all selling them now that we all know that the price of things is dictated by supply and demand. Now that I had seen the offer. closely, but where was all the demand coming from? Who was buying all these fish? She asked Wesley about the fish he had already bought. He explained to me that he has clients all over Ireland with ponds of various sizes. He estimated that the fish he had bought so far this trip would find homes for before long.

Martin explained to me that although breeding koi is a relatively specific thing when you look at the world as a whole, there are many, many people who want to buy Japanese koi, the biggest market to start with in the 70s and 80s was the UK, which then moved to Europe and now, in the last 10 years, Asia has taken over, especially customers from Thailand, from China, from Vietnam, from all of Asia. very, very popular and Asian customers are willing to pay exceptionally high prices for the best fish and, as can be seen from the fish that sold at auction for $1.8 million the other year, the balance between supply and demand was starting to improve a little.

A little more sense, especially when I consider that the most serious professional koi dealers in the world will only stock fish from Japan, as their belief that the quality of these fish is far superior to those raised in Israel or the USA ., for example, however, a terrible disaster in 2004 threatened the entire negative industry. Learning more about this Martin took us to the chuetsu earthquake museum we had just driven through the mountains and got off one of the main roads and we were at the apartments and suddenly it hit and I have to admit the first time I thought I thought Lori had entered the apartment, so it was very violent, but it lasted a little over a minute, then you realized it wasn't and everything collapsed around us and the buildings were shaking, the ground was shaking, so being a Westerner who He is not used to earthquakes, it is something very unusual. to experiment it measured a magnitude of 6.6 and destroyed buildings and roads in and outside the mountain villages 68 people lost their lives and almost 5,000 were injured survivors being evacuated by helicopter 1.3 million koi died due to the interruption of supply The mountainsides collapsed, I think almost 95 of all the mud ponds were damaged in one way or another.

Two and a half years later, locals were allowed to return to their homes in Yamakoshi and begin rebuilding their lives and the koi farms on which their livelihoods depended. There is actually a fox walking around. The next thing I wanted to learn was koi shows and how these could have an effect on the price of individual koi. Last year I visited a British koi show where people from my area show their fish to other fish. enthusiasts, a vote is also held to award prizes to some fish, such as best in variety or grand champion, today Ryan and I are at the koi show worth it, which sounds crazy, there are actually shows dedicated to watching koi and some of them win.

Awards and prizes and all sorts, it's a pretty crazy concept, but to me it's just nice because we can come and look at some of our favorite fish before we leave. Ryan jokingly sent a message to his girlfriend asking if she could buy one for a thousand quid. fish that I had seen, I looked online and some of the fish that we were able to see in the sea today over that amount of money is ridiculous, like £30,40,50,000 a fish, what do you think Laura is going to say? she might be interested a bit, I doubt it mate, yes, although I witnessed the judging at the time, I had absolutely no idea what the judges were really looking for and how they were going to award prizes for the best fish, now that I've learned about different varieties and attention to detail when looking for fish with the perfect body shape, vivid colors and balanced patterns in Japan there is a much larger and much more prestigious annual koi show than the one I visited in England.

Welcome to the All Japan Koi Show. This is a huge event with almost 2,000 koi on display. The Shinkokai is the breeders' association and they travel from the north and south of Japan to help organize the show and assist the judges. Breeders and dealers vote to determine the winners. In 2017, a one-centimeter kahaku won the all-Japan show and took first place as the best koi in the world. The fish was named legend and bred by the sakai fish farm. He did not participate the following year, but in 2019 he returned. The fish had grown to a whopping 104 centimeters. 2019 was the 50th anniversary of Japan's ancient koi show and the legend was expected to win grand champion.

Mr. Sakai put the fish up for auction before the show where wealthy koi collectors gathered and started bidding, it's safe to say that no one expected the bids to reach 203 million yen or $1.8 million. At the fair, the fish won grand champion for the second time and attracted a lot of press attention, so this is how a kahaku variety of koi carp became the most expensive. live fish were once sold several sources reported that the legend actually died shortly after he couldn't understand how the owner must have felt, but then again, if you have millions of pounds to spend on fish, you are probably financially secure enough. like not to worry.

As surprising as it is, the story of this world record koi left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I had learned that most of the very expensive fish sold today is bought by wealthy Chinese businessmen such as As a sign of prestige and success, although these overinflated prices provide support to the Japanese koi industry, I couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable with the fact that people's egos became more important than the animals themselves earlier in the week. I heard Martin talk about it. with wesley in the past people only bought shy for love said martin now some only buy for prestige it's like buying a picasso but they don't like it or know anything about it wesley responded saying that what really matters is simply appreciating the fish the beauty of these animals and caring for them properly this conversation took place at the Yamamatsu koi farm where Chris had seen a sanki that he thought would look great in his pond at home after purchasing the fish.

Chris spoke to us briefly and explained that he keeps fish because it's a break. From your busy and stressful job, admiring and caring for fish can bring calm and simplicity to a complex and pressure-filled existence, no amount of money beyond a certain point is capable of doing something that some fish keeping hobbyists will probably say it is simply possible. Don't buy the best koi unless you are filthy rich, while fish with rare anesthetic attributes will command a higher price. Certainly now I'm more of the opinion that the best koi is the one that makes you happy and that could be any fish like music. art and all expression is just a matter of personal taste we were coming to the end of our time in algeria and not only had we been impressed by the koi I'm not particularly adventurous when it comes to food but On this trip I tried proper sushi for the first time.

You like it, it's really not a strange texture. Well, I'll have some salmon. Oh yeah, we'd say I can't come to Japan and not eat sushi. I guess I don't know why. I'm so surprised that another novelty was drinking too much of the Japanese specialty saki, which is a wine made from rice, although it tasted great, it made us sing karaoke most of the night and the rest I don't remember well. our last day in negato i mentioned to martin that i would like to take another look at some chagoi, so he said we should go to the marahiro koi farm one more time.

I showed interest in two fish in particular and chose my favorite among them. So Renee asked breeder Hirosauwa how much that fish would cost. Now you might be wondering why after seeing so many colors and patterns of koi she had released a yellowish brown carp. Well, at first she had seen a chagoy for the first time at the koi museum. of the week and was captivated by how tame and hungry it was, I understood that the Marahiro Koi Farm has an impressive bloodline that produces large, healthy fish like the ones I had admired in its beautiful round pond.

Other members of our group asked me excitedly. to buy the fish, you are going to buy the fish and I explained to him that it only depended on the price the breeders were asking. I stopped and thought about my original question, what brought me here in the first place, why is a koi carp so expensive. compared to goldfish for example, well I was considering buying a large beautiful creature to keep in my pond at home, it was our last day in Negata and although we started this week as a group of strangers, it filled me with joy realize how we bonded and became good friends, all thanks to our shared appreciation for goldfish.

Hirasawa kindly made me a very reasonable offer, so I decided that as a souvenir, a living memory of my trip to Japan, I would buy this fish that we said goodbye to. renee and martin and I began the long journey home. I knew when I got home I would have a few weeks to work on my pond, expanding the filtration and cleaning it in preparation for the arrival of my fish while I edit this video, my fish is now called Charlie the Chagoi is quarantined for a few weeks in a store aquatic in England. I can't wait to go pick him up and bring him back to my pond, but for now I'll have to wait until our next movie.

I definitely recommend it. Watching one of these related videos, the world of koi karp is fascinating and I hope this video has interested you, thanks for watching.