Page 87 - World of Animals - Issue #28 Magazine

Atlantic bluefi n tuna

Bluefin in the wild

Two stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna are present – the east and west populations – although much of their

range overlaps in the central Atlantic Ocean. This map highlights their range, and their declining numbers.
East/west range overlap Eastern population

Gulf of Mexico
spawning area
W es t ern popula tion
Western population

It is estimated
that for every

50 bluefin Mediterranean Sea
swimming in the spawning area
Atlantic Ocean in
1940 there was Experts approximate a 72 per cent
just one in 2010 decline in the western Atlantic

bluefin tuna population and a 46
per cent decline in the eastern stock
What’s being done?
Alongside educating people about the tuna they
eat, wildlife charities and trusts are working

with fishermen to manage tuna catches
The key management measures being
put in place to protect the Atlantic bluefin

involve setting sustainable fishing limits

and developing harvest control rules for
all main fishing stocks. At the moment, the

purse-seine net method of fishing is a major

issue; fisheries, particularly those in the
Mediterranean, use circular nets that encircle
Why save the a shoal of fish, and then pull the bottom of

bluefin tuna? the net together to trap them. This catches a

huge amount of fish, and although quotas are

set, until the fish are landed and counted, the

Bluefin tuna are warm-blooded,
and able to regulate their body quantity that has been caught is unknown.

temperature – this is very Bluefin tuna are now so valuable that illegal,

unusual for a fish. The bluefin is unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is

as comfortable in the icy waters rife, and it’s thought that fisheries will oƒen
of Iceland as in the warm waters sell on their excess catch and not declare it, or
of its tropical spawning grounds. simply not declare their catch at all, rendering
the whole process of setting quotas useless.
These ocean beasts can grow to Groups such as Pew Charitable Trusts and
a whopping two metres (6.6 feet) the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) are devoted to
in length, and can live for up to 40 saving the bluefin tuna and are working with

years. The species grows slowly, fishermen and other tuna consumers to bring

and gets to such a large size by this fish back from the brink. Their aim is to

hunting other fish, crustaceans and reduce the amount of tuna taken from the sea,
eels voraciously, as well as feeding put limits on the size of fish that is removed

on smaller oceanic offerings such and to work with fisheries to find different and

as plankton. more sustainable methods of catching bluefin.

The bodies of bluefin tuna are
incredibly streamlined, and these “Bluefi n tuna are

fish are built for speed. They now so valuable

can even retract their fins to
reduce drag, and are capable
of reaching speeds of up to 70 that illegal
kilometres (43 miles) per hour as fishing is rife” © Nature PL

they dart through the water.
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