UPI Reports on Golet’s Bluefin Tuna Research

United Press International (UPI) published an article on a study led by Walter Golet, assistant research professor in the School of Marine Sciences and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Golet and his team recently published a paper in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series that outlined how the overall condition (fat content) of Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Maine declined despite an abundance of Atlantic herring — their preferred prey. The abundance of herring doesn’t help the tuna during foraging because the herring population growth has translated to smaller body sizes, meaning tuna have to eat more fish to pack on the right amount of traveling fat, according to the article. Tuna in the Gulf of Maine have relocated their hunting grounds to offshore banks and locales on the northwest Atlantic shelf, where herring are bigger, the article states. “Fisheries managers will now face the challenge of how to manage for high abundance of small pelagic fish, which benefits benthic fishes and mammalian predators, and maintain a robust size structure beneficial for top predators with alternative foraging strategies,” the scientists wrote. FIS, the website of Fish Information & Services, also published a report on the study.