– credit, Dominator, supplied to the BBC
Jack Gardner couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the behemoth hooked on his fishing line.
If he and his crew aboard Dominator reeled it in, he knew it would be the greatest catch of his life and provide the equivalent of a holiday bonus for them all.
What Gardner didn’t know was that the giant Atlantic bluefin tuna fighting an hours-long battle on his line was ultimate confirmation that “careful and judicious management” had revived a celebrated fish stock in the North Sea.
The Dominator’s tuna weighed in at 745 pounds, and was only about 112 pounds short of a fishery record. More importantly, it was the first Atlantic bluefin caught in the North Sea in 60 years.
In the British economy either side of the Second World War, tuna fishing was a valuable and world-renowned industry. The fish was prized for its meat for both the restaurant and canning industries, but in a story as old as industrialization, overfishing of both the tuna and their herring prey caused the fishery to collapse.
The UK has taken steps over the years to ensure these crucial stocks return, and in a report at the BBC regarding Gardner’s mammoth catch, University of Exeter research Dr. Lucy Hawkes said the fact that tuna can reach this size means that the underlying ecosystem must be in rude health.
“Bluefin tuna are also top predators who can only be in these waters if the ecosystems underneath them are healthy,” she said, adding that these outcomes are the result of judicious fisheries management, whereby the catch limits on fish are “really small” compared to overall populations.
FISH STOCKS REBOUNDING THE WORLD OVER:
Dr. Hawkes and her team routinely tag bluefish tuna for monitoring purposes off the coast of Exeter on Britain’s southwest coastline, but Gardner and Dominator set out from Whitby, on the northeast coast near the border with Scotland.
“It jumped out of the water, we all just looked at each other in awe,” Gardner told the BBC.
Two opposite points of Britain, two returning tuna populations. A spokesperson from U. of Exeter also told the outlet that the tuna caught by Whitby may have a completely different origins to the ones their teams tag and monitor.
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