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Bluefin Tuna Tricked Into Spawning

Australian aims to overcome fish shortage by simulating breeding grounds

By Lev Weinstein, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 17, 2008 7:22 AM CDT

(Newser) – A seafood entrepreneur thinks he can solve the world's bluefin tuna shortage by making the fish feel frisky, Time reports. German ex-pat Hagen Stehr, the baron of a $230-million Australian seafood empire, is simulating the tuna's breeding grounds in a hatchery—a "fishy virtual reality" with 14 hours of daylight and water at 73°F—and has succeeded in harvesting fertilized eggs from bluefin breeding stock.

But the domesticated tuna offspring is still a ways off. "Out of 10 steps, we're probably at No. 3 or 4," said one company manager. Naysayers abound, but one Australian expert says "it's only a case of when." Marketing the farmed rather than wild bluefin could be a challenge, he adds, "but how can you not sell fish when there's a worldwide shortage of the good stuff?"

[Images (4)]

[Quotes (1)]

Fishermen unload a bluefin tuna in Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia, Canada, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007. (AP Photo/Andrew Vaughan, The Canadian Press)

Workers harvest blue fin tuna from Maricultura's tuna pens March. 5, 2007 near Ensenada, Mexico. Pacific bluefin tuna leave Japan's coastal waters and swim east to school off California and Mexico. (AP Photo/Chris Park)

A diver helps fishermen to catch tuna fish at bluefin tuna farm... (Getty Images (by Event))

More Tuna breeding means more Toro. (Kent Wang)

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When I was young, I could make love anywhere. Later in life, you gotta have the bedroom, the light— everything's gotta be nice and soft, the ambiance gotta be right. With tuna, it's no different.
- Hagen Stehr on breeding bluefin

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Bluefin Tuna Tricked Into Spawning