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.