Mystery tuna creature is tongue-eating parasite, says expert

The tiny creature discovered in a tin of tuna by a Nottingham mother is a tongue-eating louse, scientists believe.

Zoe Butler was amazed to find a pair of eyes staring up at her when she opened the can of Princes tuna chunks.

The tiny tuna monster has set Twitter abuzz with explanations. The search for answers has been dubbed #tunagate.

But the Natural History Museum said that the head probably belonged to a Cymothoa exigua, or tongue-eating louse. The parasite lives inside a fish, entering through its gills and attaching itself to its host’s tongue.

Stuart Hine, Identification and Advisory Service manager, from the Natural History Museum, in London, said: “‘From what I can see I would support the head of a Tongue-eating louse, Cymothoa exigua, or similar.

Continued ...

Tuna showdown looms at Samoa conference

Small Pacific island states and powerful foreign fishing nations are heading for a showdown next week over management of the world's largest tuna fishery.

The islands want the annual meeting of the influential Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) in Samoa to limit fishing for bigeye, a tuna prized by sashimi markets in Asia, America and Europe.

They also want limits placed on catches of other tunas to maintain stocks.

Continued ...

Top chef accuses Tesco: 'If you care about our oceans, take this tuna off your shelves'

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says supermarket is backtracking on its public pledge to sell sustainable fish

The Observer, Sunday 2 March 2014

Tesco is facing the wrath of TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and environmental pressure group Greenpeace after stocking a cut-price brand of tuna linked to a controversial fishing method that can kill sharks, rays and turtles.

The supermarket switched its own-label canned tuna to environmentally friendly pole-and-line caught sources in 2012 in a high-profile change after criticism from Fearnley-Whittingstall and his Fish Fight campaign. But later the same year Tesco began to stock the Oriental & Pacific brand of tuna, which is caught using the purse seine method – where large nets scoop up all kinds of ocean creatures attracted by floating rafts known as fish aggregation devices.

While brands stocked by other retailers, including John West and Princes, also use this fishing method to some extent, they have taken some action to reduce its use. Oriental & Pacific's owner, LDH, which is partly controlled by John West, has made no such pledge.

Fearnley-Whittingstall, who will again highlight the continued problem of overfishing in his Channel 4 programme Hugh's Fish Fight, said: "Tesco made one of the biggest commitments of all to sell the most sustainable tuna. If they really care about our oceans, then Tesco should take this [Ocean & Pacific] tuna off the shelves today and other supermarkets must follow suit."

The chef's attack is the latest blow to Tesco's efforts to reinvent itself as a caring retailer interested in the quality and ethics of the food it sells.

Last week farmers said the supermarket had cut back the amount of British beef it bought, despite taking out full-page adverts in the wake of the horsemeat scandal claiming: "We know that the more we work with British farmers the better."

Continued

Tuna hearts 'affected by oil spill'

By Jonathan Amos

Science correspondent, BBC News, Chicago

Scientists say that tuna swimming in the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have experienced heart damage.

Lab research has demonstrated how crude oil chemicals can disrupt heart function in the fish.

The study, published in Science magazine, is part of the ongoing work to try to understand the impacts of the disaster.

The gulf is an important spawning ground for bluefin and yellowfin tuna.

Tracking studies have indicated that many of these fish would have been in the area during the 2010 disaster.

Scientists have long known that certain chemicals in crude oil – such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) – can be harmful to the hearts of embryonic and developing fish.

Continued

Tuna Closely Related to Some of the Strangest Fish in the Sea

Sep. 13, 2013 — Some of the strangest fish in the sea are closely related to dinner table favourites the tunas and mackerels, an international team including Oxford University scientists has found.

Deep sea fish such as the black swallower, with an extendable stomach that enables it to eat fish larger than itself, and manefishes, some sporting spiky fins like a Mohican haircut, are close cousins to mackerels and tuna despite having completely different body shapes and lifestyles.

The team, led by Dr Masaki Miya at Chiba Natural History Museum in Japan, suggests that this extended family of fishes might owe its success today to the devastating extinction that marked the demise of dinosaurs and many other creatures 66 million years ago.

The researchers report in the journal PLOS ONE this week how they combined DNA analysis of over 5,000 modern fish species with fossil evidence to solve the mystery of which species were closest to tunas and mackerels in the fish family tree.

'What was immediately clear from our result is that the extended family of tunas and mackerels is made up of fishes that all look very different from one another, with different ways of life, but which share one key trait: they all dwell in the open ocean,' said Dr Miya of Chiba Natural History Museum. 'This had been suggested before, but we were able to show that many additional groups of fishes inhabiting the open ocean -- called the pelagic realm -- were closely related to one another and to tunas.'

Continued

Surprising Fish Cousins: Tuna & Seahorses

Spiny-rayed fish rule the underwater world.

In the past 100 million years, fish with spiky dorsal and anal fins — an effective anti-predator device — have occupied every nook and cranny of the planet, said Peter Wainwright, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Davis. The group includes more than 90 percent of coral reef fish species and almost everything humans commercially fish, including bass, pollock and tilapia.

Now, Wainwright and a team of researchers have pieced together a new family tree for this gigantic brood, with more than 18,000 species living today. Using both genetic tools and fossils, the "phylogeny" reveals unexpected links between some spiny-rayed fish, such as tuna and seahorses. The findings were published July 15 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

- See more at: 

http://www.livescience.com/38285-surprising-fish-cousins-tuna-seahorses.html#sthash.LgxHVi4S.dpuf

Where the tuna swim? Tracking tuna by satellite

Tracking map reveals tuna movements in the Coral Triangle region 

May 2013. Data from pop-up satellite tags attached to adult yellowfin tuna show movements of this commercially-valuable species around Coral Triangle waters. 

The movements of four mighty swimmers named Amihan, Badjao, Hagibis, and Buhawi, can now be followed via aspecies tracking map, that shows in color-coded coordinates, how far the fish have swam since being tagged off the western seaboard of Mindoro Occidental in the Philippines. 

Large distances covered

"The data we have gathered so far reveal that tuna movements cover an impressive amount of nautical miles a day, travelling back and forth in a general north-south direction from where they were caught and released," says Dr. Jose Ingles, Tuna Strategy Leader of the WWF Coral Triangle Programme. 

"While still preliminary, the results signify that to properly manage this yellowfin tuna stock, we need to consider similar or complimentary conservation measures along the geographic area of its movements." 

WWF, in collaboration with the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), is conducting a tuna tagging project in Philippine waters to gather more data on the movements of yellowfin tuna. 

Identify spawning zones

"Through this activity, we hope to identify key spawning, feeding, and nursery grounds of this much sought-after species and make a case for governments to protect these sites," adds Dr. Ingles. 

Continued: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/yellowfin-tuna-migration.html

Greenpeace monitoring of tuna and shark fishing off Mozambique

Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior ends two weeks of joint fisheries surveillance with Mozambique government

September 2012. The Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior has ended its two week cooperation with the Mozambican Ministry of Fisheries. The Rainbow Warrior had been patrolling Mozambique's waters and facilitating inspections of foreign fishing vessels that mainly target high-value tuna and endangered sharks in Mozambique's waters. Due to limited resources, vast areas of Mozambique's waters are not closely monitored, creating an opportunity for illegal and unreported fishing.

"Currently fishing fleets are plundering the Indian Ocean of tuna, sharks and other ocean life. Vessels which repeatedly fail to comply with the rules must be stopped. Our oceans and the billions of people dependent on them for food and jobs need proper control and enforcement of fishing regulations," said Paloma Colmenarejo, Greenpeace International campaigner on board the Rainbow Warrior.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/mozambique-tuna.html

Shocked schoolboy lands record-breaking 187lb tuna

Stunned 12-year-old Conor Smith hooked the whopper on holiday off the coast of sunny Madeira last Saturday and is waiting for the record to be made official.

At double the youngster's body weight, the skipper of the boat had to use a fork lift truck to load the 5ft fish onto the scales to weigh it.

'We'd been out a couple of times and only caught one fish but I really wanted to go out again,' explained the amateur angler.  

'I was shocked when I got this almighty pull on my line - I thought I'd caught a whale.

'It took half-an-hour to reel in - it was a bit of a battle and it took two men to actually lift onto the boat using all the hooks we could.

'It weighed 187lbs - that's pretty much the weight of my older brother Alex who is 6ft 5in.'

He added: 'It still feels good to achieved such a catch - my mates have been congratulating me quite a lot.'

The youngster had to leave the fish behind him as the family were catching a flight back to their West Midlands home the following day.

His proud mother added: 'We had to leave it behind unfortunately as we were leaving the next day so we didn't eat it.

'I think it would have cost too much in excess baggage anyway, it probably would have needed a plane seat all of its own.

'It's probably best we didn't actually because we would have been having tuna sandwiches for lunch for months to come.'

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/908010-shocked-schoolboy-lands-record-breaking-187lb-tuna#ixzz23QAQZk5G

Small steps for tuna, sharks and swordfish

Measures to prevent illicit fishing of Mediterranean bluefin tuna have been strengthened at the annual meeting of governments involved in the industry.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat) decided to implement an electronic system for recording bluefin catches.

Research shows catches have been far higher than skippers have declared.

The meeting, in Turkey, also gave extra protection to the silky shark, whose numbers are falling because of fishing.

Tuna boats often snare this species by accident; and now, fishermen will have to release them alive.

Government delegates also voted through a minimum legal size for swordfish, and will draw up a comprehensive recovery plan in 2013.

But proposals for protecting the porbeagle shark, classified as vulnerable to extinction on the internationally recognised Red List, were rebuffed.

Read more here ...

Sushi bar owners buy giant tuna for $400,000

Source: AHN
Reporter: Windsor Genova
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Published: January 5, 2011 5:09 p.m. EST

Two sushi bar owners set the world record for the most expensive fresh fish Wednesday by jointly buying a giant bluefin tuna weighing 754 pounds for $390,262 at a Tokyo market.

Hong Kong-based Itamae Sushi chain owner Ricky Cheng and the owner of Tokyo’s Kyubey won the bidding for the fish in the first auction of the year on the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, also known as Tsukiji market.

The price of the tuna caught off Toi in Hokkaido beat the previous record bid of $242,627 for a 445-pound tuna in the same market in 2001.

The same buyers, who beat Chinese bidders in the tuna auction, also bought the highest priced tuna last year and in 2009.

Tuna is popular among Japanese, who are the largest consumer of the said fish in the world.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7021288330?Sushi%20bar%20owners%20buy%20giant%20tuna%20for%20$400,000