THE CATCH OF TUNAS 



Most of the marine fishes bring the fishermen less than 

 5 cents a pound. Tunas are an exception. In both of the 

 great tuna-fishing nations — Japan and the United States — 

 tunas on the dock command about 15 cents a pound. 



Tunas are relatively scarce. In terms of weight, for ex- 

 ample, they amount to only about one-fifteenth of the mass 

 of small herrings, sardines, and anchovies taken annually. 

 In 1965, the total world catch of tuna was 2.6 billion pounds, 

 or less than 1 pound for each inhabitant of the globe. Japan 

 takes about 13 pounds of tuna for each of its citizens, the 

 United States about one-tenth that. 



Of the 30,000 fishes known to science, only about 100 

 .species have a worldwide distribution — or rather, circum- 

 polar, since they are taken in every ocean but the Arctic. 

 Among these are some of the tunas. These large, swift, 

 valuable creatures of the open seas have provided food, 

 sport, and puzzlement to man since history began. Aristotle 

 knew and wrote of them. They and their close relatives, 

 smaller creatures that as a group are known as the "tunalike" 

 fishes, constitute a world resource of relatively small size 

 but great value. 



The name — "tuna" — has a curious history. Lexicologists 

 tell us we picked it up from our Latin American neighbors, 

 who use the Spanish "atun." The Spaniards got the word 



FIGURE I. Over the pasf several years, more skipjack tuna have been 

 token from the Pacific Oceon than any of the other tunas; yellowfin 

 tuno has been a close second. Tuno cotches are made at the surface — 

 by pole and line, purse seining, ond trolling — and at depth by the 

 longline. Japon, which takes almost the entire longline cotch ond the 

 western Poctfic surface catch, is the leading tuna-producing notion. 

 Skipjack tuno, token primarily at the surfoce, heovily dominate surface 

 cotches, bigeye tuno leod longline catches. fHistogroms divide cotches 

 by Japan (lower portion of bars' ond the United Stotes (upper, check- 

 ered portion of bars), but do not denote location of catch. 



from their Moorish conquerors, who in turn had based it on 

 the Latin "thunnus." "Thunnus" is still u.sed in science, and 

 is the parent of the British "tunny." As for the Romans, 

 they borrowed the word from the Greek "thynnos." Where 

 did the Greeks find it? Webster's Unabridged tells us only 

 that it is "not of Indo-European origin," but is akin to the 

 Hebrew "tannin" — serpent, or sea monster. Far, far back 

 in the shadowy past of human history men must first have 

 noticed, and perhaps caught, the tunas. 



Three commercially important tunas have names descrip- 

 tive of their appearance — bigeye tuna, bluefin tuna, and 

 yellowfin tuna. Another, the albacore, has a name whose 

 original Arabic meaning is lost. The name, the skipjack 

 tuna, apparently derives from its characteristic behavior of 

 breaking the sea surface. 



The tunas have been fished for thousands of years. The 

 ancient Greeks, for example, knew them well enough to 

 discern the appearance of year classes of varying strength 

 in the bluefin tunas. On the whole, tunas are creatures of 

 the warm seas. At the equatorial latitudes, the Pacific Ocean 

 is somewhat wider than the Atlantic and Indian Oceans 

 combined ; probably it should provide a habitat for twice as 

 many tunas as either of the other oceans. Catch statistics 

 suggest that indeed it does. The Japanese longline fishery, 

 the only one that circles the globe, in 1963 caught an esti- 

 mated 89,700 tons in the Atlantic Ocean, 80,700 tons in the 

 Indian Ocean, and 219,400 tons in the Pacific Ocean. 



Between them, Japan and the United States, which hold 

 about one-tenth of the world's population, account for well 

 over half of the world tuna catch. The North Pacific tuna 

 resource, which these countries .share, is one of the biological 

 wonders of the world. Five .species constitute the bulk of 

 the tuna landings of the North Pacific. These are the 



