Europe Announces New Step Towards Farming Endangered, Delicious Bluefin Tuna
18 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Popular Science]The rich, creamy red meat of the bluefin tuna is prized almost to a cultish degree -- at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, a single majestic specimen can sell for over $100,000 -- and as a result the species is severely overfished and endangered. Farming the fish, which might offer a solution, has proven remarkably difficult. After years of experimentation with sexy mood lighting, Australia's Clean Seas company only managed to get them to breed in captivity by injecting them with spear guns full of reproductive hormones. Now, a European initiative has announced an alternative.
The Selfdott project reports the first success breeding Atlantic bluefin tuna in floating cages without the use of hormones. True, the hatchlings all died within months, but the fish experts are confident that a change of diet will fix that next time.
Fish farming has the potential to offset the damage done to natural tuna populations by extreme overfishing. The caged fish are even likely to make tastier sashimi than wild ones, since they can be fattened as much as is desired. But it's not a panacea by any means.
Tuna is one of the most environmentally punishing fish to farm,
in part because the fish takes a decade or more to mature. During this time, the captive fish are fed massive amounts of smaller wild fish -- an estimated 20 tons of food fish goes into each ton of tuna produced -- so those prey species may become depleted in turn. The farms also produce high concentrations of fish waste, polluting the area around the farm, and can be breeding grounds for piscine diseases and parasites like sea lice.
If only Thunnus thynnus wasn't so delicious. [/QUOTE]
Source: [url]http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-08/europe-announces-new-step-towards-farming-endangered-delicious-bluefin-tuna[/url]
wow they take a decade to mature
this sucks :(... tuna is so goddamm delicious. It's true how expensive bluefin can go for. My uncle chartered a boat with a couple of guys to go fishing for a week out on the water... they caught one bluefin and that paid for their whole trip and then some. Sold it to some guy in Japan while they were still out on the water.
[QUOTE=KmScMT;24426705]wow they take a decade to mature[/QUOTE]
Well we take like...2
[QUOTE=Tetracycline;24426777]Well we take like...2[/QUOTE]
We'll we're not being hunted at an alarming rate to feed an entire planet.
[QUOTE=OvB;24426868]We'll we're not being hunted at an alarming rate to feed an entire planet.[/QUOTE]
Yet.
We need more revolutions in fish farming. My only objection is the size of the pen they keep them in. They should fence off at least a few acres of water area instead of keeping them in the relatively small cage where they spend their entire life swimming in a circle and shitting on the fish swimming under them. Those things are a breeding ground for disease.
There goes my automerge.
10 years? Hopefully we can figure out how to accelerate their growth like we do with cattle and chickens. Such measures are barbaric, but they also corner the market and make fishing or hunting for the wild versions of the farmed animals generally rather unprofitable, and therefore it protects them.
So while the farmed fish suffer the ecosystem as a whole can remain intact.
Just a thought.
[QUOTE=OvB;24426868]We'll we're not being hunted at an alarming rate to feed an entire planet.[/QUOTE]
That's what they want you to believe...
Awesome, it's been seven years, since blue fin tuna graced my tongue. Hopefully this goes somewhere, somewhere, tasty, and more affordable.
[QUOTE=OvB;24426893]We need more revolutions in fish farming. My only objection is the size of the pen they keep them in. They should fence off at least a few acres of water area instead of keeping them in the relatively small cage where they spend their entire life swimming in a circle and shitting on the fish swimming under them. Those things are a breeding ground for disease.
There goes my automerge.[/QUOTE]
it would be nice if the pens would actually be out in the ocean. Though the amount of extremely high quality netting required for such an act would be ridiculously large.
[QUOTE=GunFox;24426949]it would be nice if the pens would actually be out in the ocean. Though the amount of extremely high quality netting required for such an act would be ridiculously large.[/QUOTE]
The shitty environment of the pens could be the reason why they won't breed. Usually a fish won't breed until it's content with it's environment. I doubt swiming around in a circle with hundreds of your peers is exactly a romantic setting.
I've always wanted to try Bluefin...YellowFin is the only one I've tried. :/
Blue Fin isn't endangered in Atlantic Canada. We have super fishing laws.
[QUOTE=OvB;24427148]The shitty environment of the pens could be the reason why they won't breed. Usually a fish won't breed until it's content with it's environment. I doubt swiming around in a circle with hundreds of your peers is exactly a romantic setting.[/QUOTE]
I mean like 10 acres of ocean on the continental shelf. Top to bottom.
Again, it would require ridiculous amounts of netting, but maybe it would keep the fish happy enough to breed.
[QUOTE=GunFox;24427284]I mean like 10 acres of ocean on the continental shelf. Top to bottom.
Again, it would require ridiculous amounts of netting, but maybe it would keep the fish happy enough to breed.[/QUOTE]
It could be possible. But as you said it would be outrageously expensive. It would need to withstand storms, ship and whale collisions, and need a way to remove the inevitable by-catch you would be weeding out for years from building the pen. But I see no reason why it can't be done.
[editline]01:08AM[/editline]
And sea shepherd.
[IMG]http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/5747/news10061717steveirwind.jpg[/IMG]
Actually apon further review. I don't think sea shepherd would be opposed to such a ranch. If it promoted the growth of the population, and you returned a percentage to the wild, they should be all for it. But sea shep. has done crazier things in the past.
Well, if we develop a way to grow thousands, scratch that, MILLIONS of bluefin eggs in vitro and sustain them artificially until they reach maturity, then we can expect to have millions of bluefin tuna. We'd probably have to clone a lot of individuals, though, so we'd best develop a program to store all those bluefin DNA sequences on a computer, so that when we need more bluefins in the later future, and we have the technology to create coded DNA sequences from base materials, we can just churn out the codes, zap them into empty egg cells, and let 'em grow. This'd ensure a plentiful, renewable supply of cloned bluefin tuna for future generations. Though I don't really like eating tuna, so this is just to benefit everyone else...
[QUOTE=KmScMT;24426705]wow they take a decade to mature[/QUOTE]
They're big delicious fish. Worth every second.
