Pelagic Fisheries Lab

ONE FINCLIP. BIG IMPACT.
An open bluefin fishery means that it is a PERFECT time to collect some finclips!
If you would like to request a Genetics for Giants & Juvies sampling kit, please use the link in our bio or send an email to us at [email protected] ! Tight lines!🎣🧬

📸 Nick Jones Media Co.

We ate with this 🐟🤝🏼

To learn more about our research efforts, visit our website using the link in our bio.

This satellite tag was deployed on a 111 inch (281.94 cm) Atlantic bluefin tuna in Canada during October of 2022. The tag stayed on the fish for just under 9 months traveling down the East Coast and eventually entering into the Gulf of Mexico/Gulf of America in Feburary 2023, where it stays for March & April, presumably to spawn. After the fish leaves the Gulf, it heads right back up to Canada. The tag popped off of the fish in June of 2023 very close to where the fish was initially tagged. This fish traveled 10,016.25 cumulative miles. How cool is that?!

Ever wonder what happens to the Atlantic bluefin tuna otoliths after they are collected? To gather information from these structures, we first have to prepare them for analysis. If you can believe it, we use a jewelry sonicator to clean the otoliths back in the lab! Once the otoliths are cleaned, we use a diamond saw blade to section the otoliths and isolate the primordium, or center of the otolith. After sectioning, we polish the otolith to get a clear view of the annuli, which represent a year of growth for Atlantic bluefin tuna. The annuli are counted to estimate the age of the fish. FUN FACT! This is a very similar process to aging a tree by counting the rings of a stump!

To learn more about the information we can collect from Atlantic bluefin tuna otoliths, please visit our website’s “Our Research Efforts” page!