Tuna ......... Some of the Fundamentals

Simply put, a fish cage is a bag hanging in the water.

Question is;

Can you catch by handline, poling and trapping tuna and successfully put them in a special cage and look after the fish until harvest time.

1) Tuna exhibit an extraordinary ability to learn.

2) Happy tuna are healthy tuna. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

3) Shock……. Cause and onset of shock will be the most common cause of death for a tuna.

4) Southern Bluefin tuna can live for more than 8 weeks without food.

5) Good quality fish can be maintained with 1-3 feed cycles per week.

6) World Supermarket chains like Safeway are set to reject purse seine fish from their shelves.

7) Live aboard tuna cage by building small huts.

8) One village, one cage.

9) Drift them through the fishing grounds with local knowledge.

10) Harvest the fish cage at sea.

11) Cyclones and bad weather may cause issues

12) Most nations have all the knowledge and skills just need a little technology.

13) Remember this is not a program for fattening tuna, rather a

program for producing Happy, Healthy and Valuable Tuna for the world’s best market Place

Great healthy tuna are “HAPPY TUNA”

Footnote........

Shock at this point is the biggest issue, hook in the mouth, the struggle and the crash back into the water all lends itself for the tuna to suffer from shock.

Room to move after they land, is the best remedy, room and a little time to get over the shock and maybe even a feed.

Being able to address and understand this issue will reduce the mortalities cause by this shock.

PLEASE ADD YOUR KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND COMMENTS HERE.

1 member likes this

Comment by John LoGioco on April 26, 2012 at 11:05am: Thanks Patrick for this post. If you can give members a bit of your background that would be helpful and interesting. Have you had success catching bluefin by hook and line and transferring them into cages for harvest at a later time? Sounds like shock to the tuna from being caught and transferred is an issue - do you have an idea of the percentage of tuna that die from shock after being caught and released into the cage? One last question is how do you keep the tuna alive between catching and transfer into the cage?

Thanks, John

Comment by Patrick von Stieglitz on April 27, 2012 at 5:21pm: Hi John.

I worked in the Port Lincoln Tuna farm industry from the very first cage of fish transferred from a purse seine net.

I transferred the first tuna to a tow cage on the Spanish Med. coast in 1995 and worked to establish a tuna farm in Baja Mexico in 2002.. A professional fisherman most of my life here in Australia and I watched the Australian Government allow the fishing industry to be wiped out.

Shock is the greatest challenge to over come in the issue related to getting tuna into a cage.

How many tuna die during and after the transfer through gates underwater is entirely related to the purse seine operation. If the tuna are damaged by this operation you can loose many fish sometimes more than 10%.

The only chance bluefin tuna have to avoid wipeout is from breeding and releasing new fish into the wild.

A number of countries have already released fertilized eggs to the wild but the results are very difficult to determine.

There has recently been an increase in catching effort of tuna species around the world as seafood available in general declines. Tuna is the most valuable fish on the planet and like most things managed by the human race, it doesn't have much chance.