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TUNNIES & MACKEREL (North-east Atlantic Ocean)
Family: Scombridae
(Notes, not a comprehensive information page.)
Tunnies, or Tuna, used to be found in sufficient numbers to make the North Sea, especially off Scarborough, an area famous for captures of the massive Blue-fin Tunny, Thunnus thynnus. In 1933 an angler caught the British record specimen of 386 kg (851 lb) from a Whitby boat. It is a widespread and found in all the warmer oceans but its previous occurrence into the North Sea during the autumn was dependent on the water temperature. In cold years it would not occur.
Norwegian seas supported a Bluefin Tunny fishery with an annual catch of 900 tonnes annually between 1950 and 1954. The minimum size was about 50 kg. Book.
Most Bluefin in the north-east
Atlantic breed in the western Mediterranean and are now rare captures in
the North Sea. They were first reported by herring fishermen in 1911. They
are always larger older fish at least 5 years old. Their current absence
in the North Sea and decline since the early 1960’s was at first because
of low recruitment rates (whether natural or because of overfishing), but
may now be compounded by extensive fishing for the younger 3 to 5 year
old fish off the Atlantic coasts of Europe, including the Bay of Biscay.
31 July 2007
Commercial fisherman Dougal Lane caught an Atlantic Bonito, Sarda sarda, about three miles east of Sark, Bailiwick of Guernsey. The fish had a length of 511 mm and a whole weight of 1331 grams.
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September 2006
An Atlantic Chub (or Spanish) Mackerel, Scomber colias, caught about 8 miles south-east of Guernsey on the Guernsey side of the Guernsey/Jersey median using squid bait The black belly spots had faded completely. Fish
weighed 392 grams
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In
the classical taxonomy, three Scomber species are distinguished: S.
scombrus, S. australasicus,
and S. japonicus.
Yet, some fish taxonomists have recently recognized Scomber
colias, inhabiting the Atlantic Ocean,
as a separate species from S. japonicus,
distributed in the Pacific Ocean. Such proposal was based on significant
mitochondrial DNA divergence as well as great phenotypic variation among
individuals from these two ocean basins. However, in the absence of nuclear
DNA data this issue remains still controversial. In this study, a phylogenetic
analysis of nuclear 5S rDNA sequences was performed. A total of 30 individuals
of S. colias
collected in the Atlantic and 34 specimens of S.
japonicus from the Pacific were characterized.
Moreover, nine individuals of Pacific S.
australasicus and eight of Atlantic S.
scombrus were included. Maximum likelihood,
maximum parsimony, and neighbor-joining analyses revealed the presence
of two well-supported distinct clades corresponding to S.
colias and S.
japonicus, respectively. Altogether, morphologic
and genetic data are in agreement with the recognition of two different
species, S. colias
in the Atlantic, and S. japonicus
in the Pacific.
Source
25
August 2006
An
unusual discovery of a fresh but dead 27 kg (60 lb) Tuna
was found on a soft mud bank at Burry
Port, Carmarthenshire, south Wales, by
local angler Nick Roberts
and it was pulled ashore with some difficulty by
three
teenagers. The exact species is not known at present: the most likely
species is the Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus.
c.
9 August 2006
A
vagrant 18 kg (40 lb) Big-eyed Tuna,
Thunnus
obesus, was a rare capture by a commercial net fisherman 70 miles off
Land's End and 2,000 miles adrift of its usual habitat in the tropical
Atlantic Ocean. It is only the third capture
on record from British seas.
7
October 2005
A 10 kg Tuna was discovered in a crab net south of Göteborg in south-west Sweden. I think this is a small specimen of the Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus. This large fish is now rare in these northern seas.
Bluefin Tuna in Scandinavian Waters7 November
2004
A
440 mm Bonito,
Sarda
sarda, and a similarly sized Twaite
Shad, Alosa fallax, were caught
in a gill net set by fisherman Mark Green
near to La Tour de Rozel, on the north-east coast of Jersey. It was the
second Bonito
I have seen from Channel Islands seas.
November
2004
A
Big-eyed
Tuna,
Thunnus obesus, was reported
caught on road and line off south-west England. This is the first record
on these report pages and the only previous record seems to be from 1985.
Further details are not available at the time of writing.
5
December 2003
A medium-sized Bluefin
Tuna, Thunnus thynnus, was landed at Plymouth Fish Market
in the morning. The fish was 244 cm long (fork length) and weighed
42 stone (595 kg). It was caught on the evening of 4th December at around
49°55´N 004° 40'W, that is about 24 nautical miles east of
Lizard Point, SW Cornwall.
It was caught by the Scottish mid-water trawler Ocean Star (FR 894) in a mid-water pair trawl.
There have been a few catches
of large tuna over the last few years to the south west of Ireland, and
a number of reports of probable tunas, mainly of about one metre in length,
from around Devon and Cornwall. There were also two Bonitos,Sarda
sarda, (small tunas) caught at Polperro on the Cornish south
coast at the beginning of October 2003.
29
October 1998
A massive Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus, was captured on a Mackerel long-line off Plymouth. (Report by Doug Herdson). The Bluefin Tunny, is usually the only large species of tunny found in British seas, although it is very scarce nowadays.
Yellow-fin Tuna, Thunnus albacares, is such a rare vagrant that up to 1978, there was only one record from off south-west Wales, washed up on the beach in 1972. It usually inhabits seas of 24oC, and is a fish of tropical seas. All European records are of vagrant fish. Yellow-fin Tuna are found in the Caribbean Sea, but not in the Bay of Biscay, where the Long-finned Tunny, or Albacore, Thunnus alalunga, is fished for.
Bluefin Tunny were found
at Boxgrove
Archaeological Site, West Sussex, dated half a million years ago.
July
1996
An Atlantic Bonito,
Sarda
sarda, was caught by angler of the Marloes peninsula, S W Wales in
July 1996. It was only the eighth confirmed record from Wales this century.
Report by Kate Lock. More.
17
October 2001
A
Bluefin
Tuna, Thunnus thynnus with a reported weight of 435 kg (960
lb)
is caught on road and line by Adrian Molloy
of Kilcar, off Donegal, Ireland. The angler
claims this as the largest fish caught around the British Isles, exceeding
the giant fish of 386 kg (851 lb) caught from a Whitby boat in 1933
when Tuna were a regular catch in the North Sea.
27
September 2000
A
monster Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus,
of 240 kg (529 lb 2 oz) was caught on road and line off Ireland
by Alan Glanville
an Englishman living and working as a commercial fisherman in Ireland,
along with another the day before of 160 kg (352 lb 12 oz)
while fishing aboard Brian McGilloway's boat 'Suzanne' only 2 miles out
of Killybegs in Donegal Bay, north west Ireland. Alan's specimen is one
of the biggest ever angled off Ireland and anywhere for the past few decade.
The
British angling record is a fish of 386 kg (851 lb) from off Whitby,
Yorkshire, in 1933.
The
record specimen Bluefin caught by rod and line was an enormous 679 kg (1,496
lb)
specimen caught off Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1979.
List of Scombridae
recorded in the NE Atlantic:
Atlantic
Mackerel, Scomber scombrus
Spanish Mackerel,
Scomber
japonicus (see note) now known
as the Atlantic Chub (or Spanish) Mackerel,
Scomber
colias.
Blue-fin Tunny, Thunnus
thynnus
Albacore, Thunnus
alalunga
Yellowfin Tuna, Thunnus
albacares
Frigate Mackerel,
Auxis
rochei
Little Tunny, Euthynnus
alletteratus
Skipjack Tuna, Katsuwonus
pelamis (=Euthynnus)
Plain Bonito, Orcynopsis
unicolor
Atlantic Bonito,
Sarda
sarda
Tunny [Bluefin
Tuna] (Thunnus thynnus)
lb oz
B 851-00-00 off Whitby
Mitchell-Henry 1933
S 40-00-00 Vacant Qualifying Weight
Tunny, Big
Eyed
(Thunnus obesus)
B 30-00-00 Vacant Qualifing weight
S 66-12-00 Newlyn Harbour, Cornwall A L Pascoe
1985
Tunny, Long
Finned (Thunnus alalunga)
B 4-12-00 Salcombe Estuary, Devon B
Cater 1990
More information can be found
on the following Database:
| Index
to British Marine Fish (External)
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