THE following is a fascinating account of the tagging of southern bluefin tuna from the CSIRO blog…
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We have been reunited with an old friend. We met a long time ago, 22 years in fact, and we certainly left our mark during that first meeting. Now with a long passage of time behind us, we are keen to find where she has been all this time.
We are, of course, talking about this stunning southern bluefin tuna (SBT).
Tagged in 1993, the fish was reeled in by avid fisherman Matt Bell with the help of Skipper Dennis Heinicke, near Port MacDonnell last month.
We first met ‘Bluey’ when she was approximately two years old.
At the time, our scientists were out on the open oceans teaming up with the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna to tag over 11,000 SBT in the Great Australian Bight (GAB).
Thanks to our citizen scientists Dennis and Matt, Bluey is back, and my how she has grown.
The fish has more than doubled in size. She weighs 102kgs and has had a decent growth spurt, from 60cm to a behemoth 191cm total length – or if you are a purist for measurements, her ‘fork length‘ is 175cm (that’s still 5 foot 7 inches, or taller than Tom Cruise).
Other than growing up to be taller than Hollywood celebrities, what does an SBT do in 20 years? From what we can tell, Bluey has led quite an interesting life.
We know that Bluey spent large parts of her life travelling the southern seas.
And although she was reeled in 800km east of where she was originally caught and tagged, we know from our other more sophisticated SBT tags that Bluey has been undertaking large migrations.
As a juvenile, these migrations took her from the GAB to the Indian Ocean; upon maturing, she travelled between the Southern Ocean and the Indian Ocean, just south of Indonesia. It is here that adult SBT spawn each year.
Dennis and Matt have not only been helping our researchers by reporting and returning Bluey’s tags, but they have also collected some very important samples of the fish. By looking at Bluey’s otoliths (deposits in the ear) we can determine and verify her age. By looking at her ovaries we can determine her sex and reproductive history. And by analysing the chemical composition of Bluey’s muscles, we can know her diet.
Why are we so excited about this find? Because we rely on the cooperation of commercial and recreational fishers to find the tags, and in the vastness of Southern Ocean, finding a tagged fish after such a long time is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Remember, Bluey doesn’t have a social media profile (MySpace wasn’t even around back then) so checking in and finding out what’s been happening is a bit more complicated than trawling through her Facebook Timeline. Now that the tags and the fish are back with our scientists, we have an opportunity to learn more about the life of this particular bluefin and the SBT population in general.
These insights, will help with our ongoing research and conservation efforts in our southern oceans. The information is invaluable as we seek to understand how exploration and extraction activities in the ‘Bight’ might affect SBT populations.
We will now add Bluey’s profile to the data we’ve gathered after almost 50 years of archival tagging efforts.
We’ve recently been tagging juvenile SBT (similar to the two year old Bluey) with ‘smart’ archival tags that gather detailed data on the movements, diving behaviour, habitats, and feeding of the SBT. By comparing the data from these tags to similar tags we deployed during the 1990s and 2000s, we can investigate the impacts of oil and gas exploration and extraction on juvenile SBT during the period they ‘summer’ in the GAB.
To learn more about Bluey, you can listen to a recent interview Dr Campbell Davies conducted with ABC Radio Hobart where he speaks more about tagging and our research.
And if you would like more information about our SBT tagging efforts you can visit our fisheries page.
If you consider yourself a budding citizen scientist, and you do happen upon one of our tags during your fishing adventures, we’d love to hear from you.
There are prizes and giveaways for returned tags, plus the gratitude of our scientists and the knowledge you are furthering our understanding of these incredible creatures.
Information on how to return tags to us and the details we need are in the CSIRO blog. Check it out here