Guess you've never heard of the tuna pens south of the border? While caught wild they are feed to get their weight up then sold to the Japanese. The pens are pretty common and can be very difficult to spot at night.

 

Ahhhh, that's right! I saw that video of that boat that got hung up on one. They tow these things across the open ocean? It was sort of disturbing that in some cases now they are creating pens that are staying in a small bay. Seems an invitation to the same kinds of problems from parasites to prophylactic antibiotic treatments that we see in cattle to salmon farms.

Seems hard to believe you could keep a tuna happy in a pen.

We keep manipulating our world.

Get those wild albies while we can!

 

I read an interesting number regarding farmed tuna the other day.....
The ratio of feed (made from mainly forage fish and some fish by-products) to flesh for tuna (specifically) is 20:1
So to review.... That's 20lbs of feed to to make 1lbs of tuna flesh.
Pass the spicy tuna handroll please.....
There were other ratios for other species as well, but tuna recieved the highest "feed to flesh ratio" of the more popular farmed fishes.
Something to think about.
Ragnar

I picked up a copy of a newspaper called "The Asian Reporter" and read an article today while eating lunch. If you have access to this paper (available for free at many Asian food outlets and restaurants) you should pick it up and read this article. It is surprising.

Here are a few highlights from the article:

• By the end of this year an Australian company will be selling southern bluefin tuna raised in its hatchery
• A Japanese company breeding "more prized" Pacific bluefin tuna hopes to start sales in 2013 and ship 10,000 fish by 2015.
• The bulk of the tuna being farmed today are not bred from eggs - rather they are caught at sea then fattened up in pens (to as much as twice normal weights). But egg farming is starting.
• Atlantic bluefin is disappearing so rapidly that the US says it will back a proposal by Monaco to list it as an endangered species.
• Japan's largest seafood company operates several tuna farms. In one example, the fish live in netted sections that are about 160' by 260'.
• The Japanese consume 80% of the world's harvest of Atlantic and Pacific bluefin.
• Egg survival (itself) has ranged from 0.4% to as high as 6% in experiments. It is thought egg survival is in the 1% range for natural reproduction. A tuna lays "tens of millions of eggs." Survival from egg to adult is much lower than these numbers in nature of course.
• Among the challenges the farm industry is dealing with include;
  • The need to swim at high speeds to keep from dying (up to 50 MPH) since tuna are inefficient at absorbing oxygen through their gills.
  • Baby fish are not developed well enough to know how to brake or steer, resulting in mortality as they hit walls and nets.
  • Like other fish farms, learning complications of diseases and dietary opportunities are a continual learning process.
  • Tuna are very vulnerable to stress.
• Because tuna are such voracious eaters, there has been concern that farms do nothing to offset the fact that many other species are not available for consumption (like herring, mackerel sardine, anchovies etc) if they are being consumed in farms.
• Among the efforts to reduce that problem include a patented tuna feed "made of fishmeal mixed with oils and nutrients and looking like a brown sausage." It does not have to be refrigerated, either, saving energy costs. It is said to fatten the tuna 3 times faster, is less polluting, and since it is based on fish humans don't consume it does not reduce potential human food.
• They are doing research on a vegetarian version, something there has been "some sucess with salmon and trout."
• Still, last year a (wild) 440 pound Pacific bluefin was sold for 20.2 million yen ($220,000) last year at market. 90 pound farm tuna are selling for about $1,100 each.
• A sushi shop owner outside of Tokyo notes farmed tuna's disadvantage is that "it doesn't have a fish taste, and its color is almost white." Still, he added, "we can't be relying just on natural tuna these days, and there are bound to be improvements in farmed tuna."
• Farmed tuna is and will continue for the forseeable future to be an extremely small part of the total tuna harvest.
• But clearly, there is interest. Hawaiian regulators have approved the world's first commercial farm for Ahi.

Wow!

Glad we have our albacore. For now.

 

This is Big Business and very destructive to the ocean. If you eat sushi...please don't eat bluefin tuna!!! The quote from ragnar about the 20:1 ratio is very disturbing. Bluefin are partially homeothermic...meaning that they are nearly warm-blooded. This means that they have a very high metabolism (like us) and require a lot of food to put on weight. Salmon are like 3:1 and shrimp are 4:1....thus making tuna by far the worst!
When I first started going to Baja 12 years ago there were no pens off of Baja. About 10 years ago there were 2 or 3 off of Salispuedes (an hour N of Ensanada). Last year I counted nearly 30! My buddy Markus (New Lo Ann out of Pt. Loma) said there used to be great bluefin tuna fishing out of SD 10 years ago. Now as soon as the bite starts, about a dozen seiners move in and wrap up all the fish...I mean ALL the fish! He said there really isn't any left. The few that are left are so freaked out by boats that they can't get them to bite. Very sad.
Not sure if the bluefin will survive...especially in the Atlantic.
best fishes,
steve

 

They are over fishing the schools of baitfish to feed the BFT too.

 

There was a show on a while back called tuna Wranglers it was very interesting.

 

I saw the pens around Malta in the Mediterranean

 

I just read about the ongoing decimation of menhaden on the East Coast. It is made into feed for all sorts of things, including a bunch of pills for fish oil for omega 3's.

From the NY Times Online version in the OpEd section today:

Fish Oil, Menhaden, The The Imminent Collapse Of The Atlantic Food Chain

[by Paul Greenberg Op-Ed Contributor - A Fish Oil Story]
The deal with fish oil, I found out, is that a considerable portion of it comes from a creature upon which the entire Atlantic coastal ecosystem relies, a big-headed, smelly, foot-long member of the herring family called menhaden, which a recent book identifies in its title as “The Most Important Fish in the Sea.”

The book’s author, H. Bruce Franklin, compares menhaden to the passenger pigeon and related to me recently how his research uncovered that populations were once so large that “the vanguard of the fish’s annual migration would reach Cape Cod while the rearguard was still in Maine.” Menhaden filter-feed nearly exclusively on algae, the most abundant forage in the world, and are prolifically good at converting that algae into omega-3 fatty acids and other important proteins and oils. They also form the basis of the Atlantic Coast’s marine food chain.

Nearly every fish a fish eater likes to eat eats menhaden. Bluefin tuna, striped bass, redfish and bluefish are just a few of the diners at the menhaden buffet. All of these fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids but are unable themselves to synthesize them. The omega-3s they have come from menhaden.
But menhaden are entering the final losing phases of a century-and-a-half fight for survival that began when humans started turning huge schools into fertilizer and lamp oil. Once petroleum-based oils replaced menhaden oil in lamps, trillions of menhaden were ground into feed for hogs, chickens and pets. Today, hundreds of billions of pounds of them are converted into lipstick, salmon feed, paint, “buttery spread,” salad dressing and, yes, some of those omega-3 supplements you have been forcing on your children. All of these products can be made with more environmentally benign substitutes, but menhaden are still used in great (though declining) numbers because they can be caught and processed cheaply.

For the last decade, one company, Omega Protein of Houston, has been catching 90 percent of the nation’s menhaden.
The deal with fish oil, I found out, is that a considerable portion of it comes from a creature upon which the entire Atlantic coastal ecosystem relies, a big-headed, smelly, foot-long member of the herring family called menhaden, which a recent book identifies in its title as “The Most Important Fish in the Sea.” The book’s author, H. Bruce Franklin, compares menhaden to the passenger pigeon and related to me recently how his research uncovered that populations were once so large that “the vanguard of the fish’s annual migration would reach Cape Cod while the rearguard was still in Maine.”

Menhaden filter-feed nearly exclusively on algae, the most abundant forage in the world, and are prolifically good at converting that algae into omega-3 fatty acids and other important proteins and oils. They also form the basis of the Atlantic Coast’s marine food chain. Nearly every fish a fish eater likes to eat eats menhaden. Bluefin tuna, striped bass, redfish and bluefish are just a few of the diners at the menhaden buffet. All of these fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids but are unable themselves to synthesize them. The omega-3s they have come from menhaden. But menhaden are entering the final losing phases of a century-and-a-half fight for survival that began when humans started turning huge schools into fertilizer and lamp oil. Once petroleum-based oils replaced menhaden oil in lamps, trillions of menhaden were ground into feed for hogs, chickens and pets. Today, hundreds of billions of pounds of them are converted into lipstick, salmon feed, paint, “buttery spread,” salad dressing and, yes, some of those omega-3 supplements you have been forcing on your children. All of these products can be made with more environmentally benign substitutes, but menhaden are still used in great (though declining) numbers because they can be caught and processed cheaply. For the last decade, one company, Omega Protein of Houston, has been catching 90 percent of the nation’s menhaden.
​

Menhaden is just the most glaring example of what fish hunting — catching wild fish for food and other uses — is doing to the food chains there.
​

We need a dramatic scaling back on fishing in general, and a total moratorium on menhaden.
​

Yet when you check out the Omega Website, you find a letter from the Friend of the Sea that certifies Menhaden as a sustainable fishery.

http://www.omegaproteininc.com/pdf/Friend of the Sea.pdf


From their website:

Omega Protein is North America's leading manufacturer of marine protein and fish oil.

Accounting for over 70% of the menhaden caught in the United States and over 15% of the nation's total seafood landings. Omega Protein is one of the largest fishing companies in the United States in terms of tonnage, and one of the largest fish meal companies in the world.

Omega Protein's 40 fishing vessels and 35 spotter planes are housed at the company's home ports and processing plants in Abbeville and Cameron, Louisiana; Moss Point, Mississippi; and Reedville, Virginia.

During fishing season, April-December, Omega Protein employs over 1,100 people and during the "off" season, 500 people are permanently employed.

Thanks to its strategic system of warehouses and its ample barge and railcar loading facilities, Omega Protein can efficiently supply fish meal, fish oil and fish solubles to customers through the United States and to foreign locations as well.

 

Huge, huge business in Australia discovery channel did a show about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIbGTwLGZNU