Pelagic Fisheries Lab

Thanks for promoting the Genetics for Giants & Juvies research effort On The Water Magazine !🧬🎣

How New Research Could Reshape Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Management New findings on bluefin tuna spawning, migration, and abundance could transform how managers set quotas and regulate recreational fishing.

Tuna Science 16 - Close Kin Recapture In this episode of Tuna Science you'll learn about some cutting edg...

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.

Tuna Science 1 Natural History Would you like to learn more about bluefin tuna? Check out this first in our series and learn what fascinating creatures they are.

The brain behind the fish!🧠🐟

Our tagging data shows some amazing migration behavior detailing where fish go, but what's more spectacular is how bluefin know where to go in what appears to us as a featureless environment - the open ocean. Theories abound for which mechanisms guide them, but for Atlantic bluefin tuna, the mystery remains. Depending on their location in the ocean, they might only be able to see 20 feet in front of them, yet they can traverse 4,000 miles of open water to enter the nine-mile-wide Straits of Gibraltar with the precision of a GPS. For such a large fish, you would think their brain would be larger than it actually is. In fact, the brain of most fish is about 0.05% of its total weight. For reference, the human brain, on average, is 2% relative to body size, which is 40 times more than bluefin. For a 600-pound bluefin, it's about the size of a U.S. dime!

The next time you see one of our bluefin maps, remember the size of the brain that's behind it. For all you fishermen, Walt likes to joke that this is the brain you are up against as you try to pick your tide, your spot, hide your line, and present your bait! Please note an intact brain might look slightly different to this extracted one.

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?!

4 WEEKS!!!🐟🧬☀️
We are so excited to see what the 2026 field season will bring! Can’t wait to be spending our days at local Maine fishing tournaments, getting dirty processing Atlantic bluefin tuna heads, and in the lab preparing otoliths and tissue samples for analysis! We are also extremely excited to be bringing on FOUR undergraduate interns this year, and TWO field technicians! Stay TUNED to learn more about our newest tuna team members as June 1 approaches!

📸 Nick Jones Media Co.