Clean Seas Tuna Limited was the first to artificially reproduce Southern Bluefin Tuna in the world and that has been successfully replicated in Europe. European research consortium Allotuna has reported productive spawning of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna by using the same strategy conceived by Port Lincoln-based Clean Seas earlier this year. Allotuna’s international research team which includes Dr Dinos Mylanos and Prof Chris Bridges have successfully collected over 10 million eggs from sea cage broodstock last weekend after hormone induction trials on a tuna farm in Italy.
It is said that the spawned eggs have since been transferred to a commercial hatchery in Bari where the larvae will feed and grow. Prof Bridges expressed that the breeding breakthrough is a major boost for the fishing industry worldwide, which faces a critical shortage of Bluefin Tuna. According to him Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna wild stocks are heavily threatened by overfishing, so much so that the fishery was closed earlier this year amid loud protests from the fishing industry.
Clean Seas Chairman, Hagen Stehr AO said that he is very much impressed by the development in Europe and is proud of this great endorsement of his company’s ongoing research. He also told that this development represents a major breakthrough in providing commercial quantities of eggs ‘on demand’ for feeding into hatchery systems. He added that there is much further work to do, it is clear that this technology can be applied to solve one of the major bottlenecks in the production of sustainable aquaculture for the endangered Bluefin Tuna.
Stehr said that the current breakthrough proves that Clean Seas Tuna is right on target with its Southern Bluefin Tuna lifecycle project and that it is a matter of when, not if, commercialisation starts.
