252 Fish Stories 



it is not lacking in possible excitement is evident, as your 

 line flies from the reel, the click singing a song of the sea. 

 Your game has not flung himself into the air, but has 

 sounded, like a salmon or a whale, and is going down, down, 

 until you wonder that a surface fish can live to so suddenly 

 change its pressure, as at twelve hundred feet, it is perhaps 

 absolutely black as night, and the pressure is equivalent to 

 a ton-weight on the square inch, for every six thousand feet 

 of depth ; so that even at the five-hundred- foot level, which 

 your game has reached in his downward plunge, he subjects 

 himself to extraordinary conditions, and some fishes in 

 coming up, have bulging eyes, and almost explode. 



This plunger of the deep sea is a tuna, and to sound and 

 dive deep into the " dark unfathomed caves " seems to be 

 his prerogative ; and if all the stories relating to the plunges, 

 mighty struggles and wreckings of tackle could be told, the 

 result would be a tale which would test the credulity of 

 every reader, and to some, seem to demand the quadrages- 

 ima as a penance, as no fish taken with the conventional 

 rod and line reduced to the minimum size by scientific ex- 

 periments, has made so much history, has been so blazoned 

 around the world. 



As these lines are written I receive a letter from Sydney 

 in New South Wales: 



" Leaping tunas * have appeared off our shores for the 

 first time in history. Advise me as to tackle." 



A letter from Newport states that " the waters off the city 

 are alive with tunas." All of which I mention to illustrate 

 the fact that the tuna is not only a mighty fish, but a world- 

 wide roamer, a swashbuckler of the sea, with a wide field, 

 the waters of the whole reasonable world. 



All tuna stories are twice- and thrice-told tales ; I wish to 



* This was the Australian Tuna, Thunnus maccoyi. The senior 

 author was present when the first one appeared. It was caught 

 and it weighed 160 pounds. This tuna has the finlets golden yel- 

 low, trimmed with black like the Japanese albacore, but in that 

 there is no black edging. 



