Bluefin tuna eggs. (Photo Credit: IEO)
JAPAN
Tuesday, May 27, 2014, 00:50 (GMT + 9)
The Fisheries Research Agency (FRA) reported that the world’s first successful bluefin tuna spawning has been achieved in an onshore facility.
The aquaculture facility, located in Nagasaki, can control water temperature and day length.
The agency started farming 126 bluefin specimens that were two years old and about a metre long in two round fish tanks measuring 20 metres in diameter and 6 metres deep, at its Seikai Institute in May last year, the Japan Times reported.
The temperatures were kept at 18 to 29 degrees and the daily amount of sunshine was kept close to natural conditions.
FRA also determined that the number of eggs produced has reached some 200,000, and several tens of thousands of juvenile bluefin have hatched.
“We hope that 10 years from now we can provide 20 to 30 per cent of the young fish needed for cultivation through land-spawning,” pointed out Keiichi Mushiake, head of the institute’s Research Center for Tuna Aquaculture.
The agency stressed it would conduct an ecological study on bluefin tuna, including proper conditions for and frequency of spawning.