Japanese Scientists Breed Bluefin in Captivity

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Taken from FW email newsletter

13 Apr 2015

JAPANESE scientists may have found a way to save wild bluefin tuna from extinction by successfully breeding and raising the fish in captivity for the first time.

Scientists from Kinki University in Wakayama have been working on the technology for 30 years.

"The first challenge was to increase survival rates from harvested eggs to hatchlings, and we got it to 5 per cent," the university's Professor Yoshifumi Sawada said.

"The bluefin hatchlings ate each other, so we then had to introduce other types of hatchling species for them to eat."

The scientists also faced the difficulty of replicating the best conditions for bluefin, which are notoriously hard to breed in captivity due to their sensitivity to water temperature, currents and noise.

Read the full story at: http://abc.net.au/news/6373310

sounds good but , I`m wondering how many extra x100Ks tonnes of wildfish annually will need to be harvested for the fish meal and fish oil component of the aquaculture feed.

The last research info I read, claimed it takes approximately 6kg of harvested wildfish to produce 1kg of farmed fish, global annual production of fishmeal and fish oil is about 6.5 million tonnes, these are 2008 released figures