Interesting.
Where do you suspect they are fished from? There are six tributaries of the Xingu, none are called Rio Sao Felix.
What I have hilighted in bold, are you sure you are not thinking of the Rio Fresco? That is the river that the city of Sao felix lies on (and of course the Xingu).
It will be interesting to see how they sell though given the climate of the Global economy. Arent Asian markets, especially Japan's, also hurting really bad?
Maybe the people that can afford a very expensive fish in the first place can havnt been hurt too bad by the economy.
We will find out in a month. Lets say just 50-100 in the US make it. Do you all think all will sell at say $1500-2000? If so how long would it take? It costs money to keep fish in house plus you risk some dieing on you.
I dont know how importing works but Ive worked in retail and wholesale fish industry.
For cheap fish, once everything is said and done, typical mark up is around 300%. Its easy to sell a fish for $1.50 when it was only 50cents. When I was working we would mark up more expensive fish, say a fish that costs us $50 we'd sell for $75. Yeah its only a 50% mark up but a $25 net profit on one fish is still a heck of alot more then selling several cheaper fish.
The market for rays may or may not be different, I dont know. So once landed, say a leo costs the importer $600-800 (a wild guess). Are they going to be marked up 3x that cost? Twice? Half? Who knows.
Say its only a 200% markup and the importer brought in 50 fish and everything goes perfect, no DOAs and his final price is $800 per fish. He sells all 50 for $1600, a profit of $40,000!!! Good deal for him!!
Edit to add: Cause I know some is going to say it, Im not counting fixed costs like the importers facility and other variable like energy, food, etc so $40,000 may or may not be as good as it sounds!
