

Taming the Wild Tuna - Why farmed fish are taking over dinner plates - kitcar
http://online.wsj.com/articles/why-farmed-fish-are-taking-over-our-dinner-plates-1415984616

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techrat
>It was more than that. The moment the researchers grabbed a few juvenile fish
out of a net, the skin started to disintegrate, killing them. It took four
years just to perfect delicate fast-releasing hooks for capturing juveniles
and moving them into pens.

Can anyone explain why this is? Seems odd that a wild animal's skin would be
so easily ruptured when it has to survive the rigors of the ocean.

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sdrothrock
I don't know for sure, but I had a few guesses.

1\. Juvenile, so immature? Softer/more vulnerable scales?

2\. The scales may be optimized for speeding along quickly through water and
the net basically tore the scales apart?

3\. The scales may not be durable since the tuna's primary mode of defense is
probably speeding away.

4\. The end of the article does say that "only one in tens of millions becomes
an adult," so it could just be a weakness that was never changed in the course
of evolution because it's not detrimental or common enough to force selection.

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sdrothrock
This is a great article and I feel like the headline doesn't even do it
justice. I'd love to read something more in-depth (a book, even) on the trial-
and-error approach the researchers went through to find everything affecting
the tuna in captivity. I was amazed that this species is even alive,
especially with this quote: "in the wild, only one in tens of millions becomes
an adult."

One thing that did bother me, though, was the WSJ's presentation of the
pictures -- I had huge white gaps between all of the pictures and kept
wondering if I was missing content.

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kristopolous
thank god. industrialized hunting at a global scale is probably the least
sustainable activity we are doing.

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sfrank2147
The one in 30 million statistic is crazy to me! That means that the surviving
fish need to average 30 million children in their lifetime to sustain the
current population - if they stay adults for 2 years, that's 41,000 children
per day! Can someone shed light on how that's possible?

Note also that it's 1 in 30 million babies that actually hatch that survive,
not just 1 in 30 million eggs.

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maxerickson
Wikipedia looks like it makes sense:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_bluefin_tuna#Life_histo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_bluefin_tuna#Life_history)

They are reproductive for more than 2 years and lay millions of eggs in each
breeding season.

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IndianAstronaut
This is an immense step from salmon fishing, where the animals are under
20lbs.

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maxerickson
It's kind of a step backwards, one of the considerations for farming animals
is how efficiently they convert feed into protein (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio)
), and salmon are probably more efficient at this than tuna.

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vinhboy
It's kind of funny to me that it's easier to conquer nature, than it is to
change human behavior.

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wtbob
I'd love to know why, but the article doesn't load with NoScript.

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sehr
because it's 2014, and lobotomizing your browser may have harmful effects.

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Nux
Would you install and run random applications that you have no idea what they
are doing from random sites? No? Interesting.

If in 2014 you need to run code in my PC to display some fucking text or to
let me scroll, then we're pretty much doomed.

