Scientists said that overfished Atlantic bluefin tuna can be save if we learn how to breed these huge fish in captivity, which could reduce pressure on wild tuna. As the demand for bluefin sushi is rising it is believed that the tuna will inevitably follow salmon, catfish and other smaller fish into successful commercial aquaculture.
Yonathan Zohar, the director of the University of Maryland Center of Marine Biotechnology, told that the about 0 years from now, we’ll get bluefin tuna to breed via land-based hatcheries as it is only the matter of time and resources. But the problem arises that bluefin takes 12 years to reach sexual maturity, compared to about three years for catfish, and getting them to breed outside their natural habitat is difficult.
According to Zohar the captive tuna’s brains were not producing enough of the hormones that normally tell the fish’s bodies to breed. Therefore Zohar developed a drug treatment that mimics the hormone at the top of the chain of command. Some scientists are not contended with the prospects of breeding bluefin tuna and the environmentalists say the breeding efforts are a costly distraction.
Tom Grasso, the director of marine conservation policy at WWF, said that the breeding of tuna is an expensive way of solving the problem. It is true that the population of bluefin tuna in the western Atlantic has gone down by more than 90 percent since 1970, confirmed the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.
