Persevering Researchers Make a Splash With Farm-Bred Tuna

Persevering Researchers Make a Splash With Farm-Bred Tuna

The third article titled “Persevering Researchers Make a Splash with Farm Bred Tuna” discusses Japanese researchers’ attempts to breed Bluefin Tuna in Tuna Farms off the coast of Japan. This is in order to supply farm bred tuna to seafood markets and restaurants instead of having wild Bluefin tuna being caught as juveniles and then kept in pens and fattened up for markets in Japan. The project started back in 1970 at Kindai University where researchers were trying to keep juvenile fish alive long enough to survive to adulthood. This proved difficult because Bluefin Tuna are warm blooded and constantly need to keep moving to stay warm. They’re built for speed and endurance so being kept in a fish pen resulted in many Tuna running into the walls of the enclosures and breaking their necks in the process. Throughout a span of 30 years they have managed to tweak the process and are now having full-grown fishing spawning so that they can breed Bluefin Tuna while giving the wild Bluefin Tuna a reprieve from over exploitation. These researches are hoping to release more tuna back into the ocean as a conservation process but many do not think it will work because it will just make the market for tuna even larger than before. While attempts are being made to fix this situation, the farm breeding of Bluefin Tuna is proving to be a very difficult and possibly futile situation if it does not benefit the tuna or the fish markets at all.

Dennis Normile

Science. 6/5/2009, Vol. 324 Issue 5932, p1260-1261

American Association for the Advancement of Science

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5932/1260