HUNTING THE TUNNY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 September 1939, Page 8

HUNTING THE TUNNY

AN IMPORTANT FOOD FISH. REACHES WEIGHT OF 1000 LBS. Our big-game fishermen are turning their thoughts to our north-eastern coast, and the trawlers will soon be hailed from luxury pinnances wtih the long-drawn inquiry, “A-n-y T-u-n-n-y?” shouted fortissimo across the heaving water, says E. C. Boulenger, inf the "Observer,” London.

The tunny, though no more than a rich man”s plaything in England, commands a more serious respect as a most important food supply, feeding a vast proportion of the world's populace. Though it has been fished on the grand scale from remote antiquity, much yet remains to be learned of its general economy. The tunny is a giant mackerel, reaching a length of 10 feet, and a weight of well over 10001 b. It enjoys a wide distribution, abounding in most warm seas of both hemispheres. Its distribution varies seasonally, and as dictated by physiological changes in the fish and a resultant need of different environment. When on a migratory swim it can maintain a speed of eight knots almost indefinitely. NUMBERED HOOKS. Its migratory journeys are being carefully studied, and specimens caught are released after being provided with passports in the shape of numbered metal discs. Numbered hooks, it may be mentioned, are also a means of tracking the tunny’s movements. since it is an adept tacklebreaker. and giant fish may acquire a perfect armoury of hooks before eventually being landed. The principal spawning ground of the European tunny are situated, it is believed, near the Azores, and others are situated in the region of the Greek Islands, and off the coast of Madeira. The tunny that appear in- the late summer off the Yorkshire coast, travelling from the spawning. areas —chiefly ■the Azores —take an unnecessarily laborious route by way of the Irish Channel, and the north coast of Scotland when the short cut through the Channel would be equally open to them. It has been suggested that this is due to unreasonable conservatism, the fish following the route approved by their forebears aeons before the Channel was in existence. American Atlantic tunny tend to exceed in size those haunting European and African waters, specimens weighing more than 13001 b. having been recorded. Small fish and cuttlefish are their chief food. The giant fish are trapped in nets off the Straits of Gibraltar and the coasts of Cicily, and the seeker after thrills could desire nothing more exciting than this wholesale rounding up by means of the “magrague” net trap. The “madrague” consists of three parts: a body consisting of a complex system of pockets about 800 yards long and two tails —one 1000 yards long. Some 10 barges manned by about 200 men and in charge of a flagship surround the site of the submerged trap and form a ring. THE KILL. All hands haul at the net till it is within some three feet of the surface. At once pandemonium reigns. A hundred giant tunny and perhaps 20 or 30 swordfish with yard-long swords may be present. The fish dash here and there in panic. The men, as mad with excitement as the fish, leap into the water and attach lassoes to the fishes’

tails, when tunny and swordfish alike are hauled up backward and rushed 'ashore by fast motor barges. A friend who has sailed with a tunny fleet off Tangier has described to me how the master fisherman, a genial Spaniard, kept in his cabin a photograph of a big-game fisherman in perfect Bond Street coat with multiple harness standing proudly posed beside his single seven-foot-long tunny. “Some time,” said the Spaniard, “the fishing very bad. I think perhaps I cut the throat or blow out the brains. And then I look at that. More than £lOO worth of tackle, a steam launch, five helpers—and one fish. Then I laugh and am all right again.”