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.
While shark fishing 2018 we were lucky to
hook 9 of these BlueFin and got 6 to the boat. The biggest
around 380lb. While there is still no uk quota for them. The
EU has again not shared the quota which is now 16,750
tonnes.
All fish that we caught were released
after recovery alongside the boat.
In the past 5 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 Plymouth and Penzance. Most of them halfway between Mevagissey and Falmouth.
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
16,750
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.
As
many of you know we were one of the lucky 3 boats that
joined the ThunnusUk Tagging programme. Hampered by the
weather only 10 fish were Tagged in the programme.
1000s of Blue fin Tuna were seen in the
area. I'm still looking in to the possibilities of catch and
release quota.
