Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna

Last year whilst sailing from Minorca to Sardinia I saw one of largest pods of dolphins I’d ever seen there were literally 1000 or more. Flying above the Dolphins were 100’s of sea birds which is always good sign for large shoals of fish under the water.

Striped dolphins move through the sea at high speed and porpoise through the water and are extremely streamlined and powerful swimmers.
I wondered what type of fish they were chasing as it was early May as I was on passage to Southern Sardinia. Eventually I found out they must of been chasing Atlantic Blue fin Tuna. 

Carloforte on the island of San Pietro is a famous Tuna catchment area. This goes back many centuries as Sardinia falls into the breeding path of the Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna.
Atlantic Blue fin Tuna is an apex predator grows to the size of small car and can out swim any other fish in the ocean.

It’s a Beautiful fish with metallic blue on the top and silver whitish underneath helps camouflage it from above and below. It can retract its dorsal and pectoral fins to make itself more streamlined. The fish is all muscle and is built for speed and endurance, with a voracious appetite. SCIENTIFIC NAME: Thunnus thynnus 

Unfortunately they are a endangered species due to the great popularity of sushi especially with the Japanese. They can grow as Large 500/600lbs length 6.5 feet Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna is the most sort after of all Tuna species. With the large Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna fetching as much $700,000 US dollars on the Japanese fish market in Tokyo.

Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna are warm blooded which is a rarity in fish having red blood cells. They’re happy in both cold and warm waters they spawn in Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea. When they migrate into the Mediterranean they like to keep close to land and they circulate around in a clockwise fashion.

When I took a recent bus trip down to Punta point by Isola Piana on San Pietro I got chatting to an observer for ICCAT. International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. He was going to the Tuna fish canning factory by Punta point to inspect the canning processing of Tuna. ICCAT is an international governmental body for the protection of tuna through data collection and scientific monitoring of Tuna and related fish species.

Few days before we were out sailing and heading north to Porto Flavial. I Noticed an extended line of small coloured buoys from the coastline far out to sea. At the end of the tuna nets were cylindrical holding pens. The tuna like to get close to the coast line and they get channelled into various box type nets which extend down to the sea bed. 

The Tuna get herded into these long the elongated Tuna nets, which contain various sections. The final net is called Morte or death net were the fisherman haul out the trapped Tuna for the final kill. It’s pretty gruesome exercise. 

The fisherman use long hooks to grab the a Tuna and long knives to stab and kill them, it’s pretty barbaric to watch these beautiful fish being slaughtered on mass.. The whole exercises is extremely bloody and red blood squirts out all over the place. With lots of blood and gore flying all over the fisherman during the slaughter of the Tuna . 

It’s a rather primitive process and reminds me of the mass killing and slaughter of pilot whales in the Faroe islands. The shoreline is full of threshing and dying pilot whales and the water is a sea of red!

The Tuna migrate right across the Atlantic from the eastern seaboard of the US into the Mediterranean spawning grounds. The species is definitely under threat due to their high financial value value of the fish. 

The tuna that aren’t fully grown are kept in the pens and fed live bait such as squid to fatten them up for sale to Japan. The 700lbs fish can be sold for as much as million US dollars. Hence the overfishing of Tuna but ICCAT trying to regulate the catches. Here in Carloforte/ Portoscuso fishing period is only 6 weeks long.

End of May every year Carloforte celebrate the GiroTonno or tuna festival were crowds of Sardinians from the mainland come to visit Carloforte for the tuna festival. 

But the paradox of the tuna festival is that’s it’s so far removed from the actual gruesome reality of the demise of such beautiful fish off the Sardinian coast.

https://youtu.be/_VA45L6SXRUhttps://youtu.be/KWxGuLLEywghttps://youtu.be/dVzfeoMFMiA

Warning this short video is very graphic and brutal be warned!

Recently caught Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna Portoscuso Sardinia.