BlueFin Tuna
Blue Fin Tuna is very exciting fishery
off the Cornish coast. This has been done
for many years from the Mediterranean, Ireland and USA now they are off our
coastline in good numbers.
In the past years we have been visited by these big game fish and over the few months there has been many Blue Fin Tuna caught in the local waters between Looe and Penzance. Most of them halfway between Mevagissey and Falmouth. many times this year we have had these giants around the boat while fishing on the inside wrecks
Unfortunately
Due to the UK government we are currently not allowed to
target BlueFin Tuna.
While the UK is a member of the EU and the Common Fish Policy
(CFP) within the EU, Only 8 EU countries share the EU's 2018
15,850
tonnes of quota.
Atlantic BlueFin tuna (Latin: Thunnus thynnus) were once a common sight in UK waters, ranging
throughout the Celtic and North Sea. However, they largely disappeared from British waters in the 1990s and only in recent years have they returned. In the last five years, Atlantic bluefin tuna are frequently reported during the late summer, autumn and winter when they move into coastal areas of the UK to feed on energy rich fish, such as sprats and herring.
Whilst their return to ...our coastal waters is incredibly exciting, we know very little about these magnificent animals; where in the ocean they travel from to the UK, where they go when they leave, and just how many have been seen in recent years. To learn more about bluefin tuna in our coastal waters, the “Thunnus UK” project, with funding from the European Union and Defra, will undertake a 2-year programme of research to provide a baseline understanding of the ecology and distribution of these fish around the UK.
I attended the launch of the BlueFin research
Programme held by @thunnusuk
Thunnusuk are now Electronically Tagging Blue Fin Tuna and
we are lucky enough to be apart of this tagging programme.
We are being contracted to Catch, Tag and Release these fish
in November 2018.
