permitted Atlantic tuna purse seine vessels, a transfer vessel, and a holding vessel have all requested exemptions from certain regulations applicable to the harvest and landing of bluefin tuna in order to, “Conduct research on bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Maine area.”
  These enterprising fishermen, fools or visionaries, propose to transfer bluefin tuna that they catch, to a cage towed by a holding vessel. During the course of a special tagging study that they plan to do, approximately 20 bluefin tuna may be harvested per day to investigate characteristics of tagging sites and tag retention, as well as investigate the, “economic impact of delayed landings in the purse seine fishery.”
  While Abrams may be right not to invest; this Gulf of Maine experiment with bluefin may not be so crazy. It’s succeeding in some parts of the world and apparently making some investors very rich. In 2001 the industry jumped by 35 percent, due mostly to extensive expansion of operations in Australia and the Mediterranean Sea, as well as additional pen projects in Malta, Croatia, Turkey, Mexico, Sicily and several African nations. Each pen can hold as many as 1,800 tuna, some of them weighing in at close to 1,000 pounds.
  Abrams claims that much of the growth in penned-tuna can be traced directly back to Japanese investors. “And they’re being covered by their country against losses,” Abrams said. “We can’t compete with that.”
  How much the Japanese have invested in global penned-tuna operations remains to be seen, but one in which the Japanese have a played a major role, is the production process. In Port Lincoln, Australia, penned southern bluefin tuna are closely monitored by biologists employed by the main Japanese tuna importers. Tuna buyers from Japan are playing a leadership role within the world-wide penned-tuna industry, much the same way that urchin buyers from Japan have set the standards for urchin processing in Maine. And if you thought there was money to be made in the original urchin fishery, wait until you hear about the bucks being made in Australia by the “Tuna Barons”.

“There’s Gold In Them There Pens”

Harvesting Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna from a pen in Croatia. The person in the Zodiac is using a harpoon style electrocution device to harvest the tuna.

  Last April, Vivek Tulpule, deputy executive director of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), announced that the Southern Australian penned southern bluefin tuna industry (a cousin to the Atlantic bluefin tuna) is now worth over $132.37 million on the world market. Tulpule said that the industry’s 2010 target was to bring production up to $538.1 million, but that they would probably meet that goal sooner than later. Australian fish exports hit $1.18 billion last financial year (an increase of 9 percent), due mostly to the success of their southern bluefin penned-tuna operations.

Tough Act To Follow
  According to ABARE documents, it’s just not worth it to fish anymore. By their calculations, tuna caught off a long line, is only worth about $8 a kilogram, while Australian penned-tuna can be worth as much as $35-$40 per kilo. It’s how the fish is killed and the quality of the meat that determines the market value. And currently, the primary market is Japan, where the fat content, color, and, of course, the taste, can make all the difference in the world.
  Penned-tuna is killed in a specific way, following stringent Japanese guidelines. In Spain, the penned-tuna are killed by divers with special spearguns that electrocute the fish. Mainer, Robert Peacock, COO (Chief Operations Officer) of TRUFRESH, buys bluefin and yellowfin from pens off the coast of Baja, Mexico. Peacock said that the tuna are caught in the Pacific and then held and towed in pens up the Mexican coast toward the U.S. border. Sea lions can be a problem, but Peacock said that the operators have come up with a cleaver solution. “They keep the tuna pen inside another larger pen,” Peacock said. “And they put some sharks into that outer area. Their predator net is literally a predator.”
  On harvest day, Peacock said that the tuna are wrestled out of the water by divers, and forced up onto a special padded ramp into a completely padded open-air slaughterhouse. “The padding is designed to keep the fish from being bruised.” From there, a crew of workers kill the fish, simultaneously cutting a main artery behind the gills to bleed it, and driving a thin steel wire down the fish’s spinal column, to paralyze it. Then the gills are cut off and the fish is gutted and placed into tubs filled with an icy saline water solution. “The whole process takes only about 30 seconds,” Peacock said.
  The rush is to preserve the tuna’s quality in two ways: first, to avoid the formation of excessive lactic acid in the flesh, which, according to Peacock, will change the taste and ruin it for connoisseurs. And second, to prevent the fish’s blood temperature from rising after it’s been pulled out of the water, which would have an effect on the taste and the color.
  Peacock said his bluefin tuna are then shuttled ashore and quickly trucked fresh up to Los Angeles, where they are loaded on the next nonstop flight to Japan, to be featured on a tray of sushi, within a few days.
  In contrast, tuna caught in the wild, with traditional gear, may be dead for hours before processing, or injured and bruised during the hauling process, adversely affecting the condition of the flesh and greatly reducing it’s market value. Plus, penned fish can be fattened or “tuned” for
the different Japanese markets. Penned tuna are usually fed three times a day, instead of the once a week that most wild tuna eat.

Raw Fish
  Driving the bluefin tuna industries is a staggering appetite for sushi in Japan. According to a June story in The Independent (UK), written by Stephen Khan and Kathy Marks, “Of the total worldwide catch of 1.2 million tons of tuna, the Japanese consume 600,000 tons.” Of that amount, it’s the bluefin that demands the highest dollar in the Japanese market and is the fish of choice for sushi gourmets. In Japan, bluefin sells for as much as $45 a pound. A 410-pound tuna was sold last year at the renowned Tsukiji fish market for a whopping $160,000.
  In the long run, Jerry Abrams may live to regret his decision to not invest in penned-tuna operations in the bay of Cape Cod. But, no matter how successful the first projects are or aren’t, one thing is for sure, penned-tuna operations are going to have an increasing effect on U.S. tuna fishermen. “I don’t have too much optimism for our tuna fishery right now,” Abrams said. “Or, for any of the fisheries, for that matter.”

To Be Continued…
  Next month, the Fishermen’s Voice will take a look at the downside of penned-tuna production, the hidden costs and the rippling effects that a manipulation of the fishery can have on the local environment, as well as the socio-economic effects on the global market and local infrastructure. For example, bluefin are fed a diet of mostly fresh herring. 1,800 mature tuna can eat a lot of herring, especially being fed three times a day. In Southern Australia, the demand is so high that pen operators are being forced to import feed fish from California. And while penned tuna operations have been a boost to some local economies, they can also change the quality of life in negative ways. For example, in Port Lincoln, Australia, six boats, carrying armed rent-a-cops, are forced to patrol the bay each night, to protect the tuna pens from poachers.