Anything strike you as special about this fish here? Well, it's worth 1.8 million dollars. It won grand champion at the
All Japan Koi Show in 2017, and is the most expensive
koi fish ever sold. Koi may just look like
an oversized goldfish, but they're not even remotely related. Koi are actually a type of
carp, and today they're some of the most expensive
pet fish in the world. But why? Koi were originally raised
in Japan in the 1700s when rice farmers first
began breeding them for their distinct colors and patterns, similar to how we breed dogs
for their specific traits. And just like prized dog breeds, Japanese people take koi
breeding very seriously. There are regular competitions
to name the top koi. Judges and buyers pay attention to how healthy its skin looks,
its size and body shape, and how gracefully the
fish moves in the water. But the most important trait
of all is the koi's coloring. The best koi have a good
balance of colors and patterns according to their variety. For example, there are
koi with light blue spots, ones with large red
patches on their backs, or all-metallic gold. But the most winning
fish often just boil down to these three varieties. They're often the most valuable. They dominate the shows, winning nearly every major category each year. And the better-looking the fish, the more a buyer is willing to pay. Yvo: Yeah, it depends. You can buy some small and cheap koi fish for a couple of bucks, but also, yeah, it can get up really,
really high to thousands, ten thousands of dollars. Narrator: That's Yvo de Wal. He's a koi hobbyist and
seller in the Netherlands, and he heads up the YouTube
channel Koi Partner. Each year he visits Japan to shop for koi. Yvo: The breeders are located there, and they have experience with their bloodlines for many, many generations. Narrator: You see,
bloodlines are just as prized in koi as they are in dogs because some of these koi are the result of decades of selective breeding. I mean, just take a look at the koi's wild
relative, the common carp. Its dark colors would be
considered unattractive for a koi, but it's perfect protection against predators in the wild. So how do you get from this to this? Well, it's actually similar to how we got from this to this, except
koi breeders mainly select for size and color and ignore... Fluffiness. Koi have six types of
color cells in their skin. Their cells can be red, yellow, black, white, blue, or metallic. Now in order to get a beautiful,
reddish-orange pattern like the one on this
1.8 million dollar fish, you need to select for
fish that have a white body and lots of red cells that
concentrate in large patches. Red and white are important
colors in Japanese culture, representing joy and purity. But having the right
colors is only part of it. A koi's color cells sit at
different depths in the skin, some right near the
surface and some deeper in, which ultimately determines
how bright the fish appears. The brighter the fish,
the bigger the price tag. Today there are about 120 varieties. To compare, there are
about 200 breeds of dogs. But when it comes down to it,
breeding koi is a lot harder. A single koi can give birth
to hundreds of thousands of baby fish at a time. Yvo: I think we are talking about millions and millions of fish per breeder. Narrator: So breeders must choose wisely. One breeder, for example,
reports that he starts with 3 million fish and selects 15,000 to raise over the first year. From that he chooses 1,000 to continue to raise the second year. Yvo: Yeah, it's a really
hard job for the breeders. Narrator: But in the end, all
that hard work is worth it. The breeder of this grand champion waited until she was nine years
old to sell her at auction. And by bringing in a world
record of 1.8 million, the breeder got not only a
huge return on investment but a priceless reputation
boost in the koi community.
