The stock of bluefin tuna has increased because of a strict management of that stock, a oceanographer says after an enormous catch west of Ona. The catch is probably equivalent to all the Norwegian quota for 2016.
The 190 bluefin tuna, are each weighing from 170 to 300 kilograms and will be used for and sold as sushi, the newspaper Bergens Tidende writes.
Ring net boat MS Hillersøy has a quota of 32 tonnes of the total Norwegian quota of 43.7 tonnes, and Captain Tore Hillersøy says he has not experienced anything like this in 30 years.
– It’s a seriously large amount of work to gut so much fish, he said.
Researcher Leif Nøttestad at IMR in Bergen says that many thought the bluefin tuna was gone forever.
From 2006 poaching severely punished, and the Atlantic Tuna Commission established catch certificates.
Nøttestad describes the big catch as a historic moment.
– Very unpopular measures have been adopted, and now we are reaping the fruits of ten years of that, the researcher says.
He stressed that the increase in population hasn’t got anything to do with the climate changes, and says that it is important to fish despite the fact that the population is still affected by the overfishing which took place before the stricter measures were put in place.
– If we do not fish, we know nothing. The statistics we get from catches, are the basis of our knowledge about the stock.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
