"Taming the Wild Tuna"

"In the wide expanse of the wild ocean, there is perhaps nothing more wild than the world’s largest tuna — the giant Atlantic bluefin. Equipped with a kind of natural GPS system that biologists have yet to decode, the bluefin can cross and recross the Atlantic’s breadth multiple times in the course of its life. Its furious metabolism enables the fish to sprint at more than 40 miles an hour, heat its muscles 20 degrees above ambient, and hunt relentlessly at frigid depths in excess of 1,500 feet.

Yet in spite of all of its unwieldy and feral characteristics, aquaculture scientists have just announced an important step toward converting the Atlantic bluefin, in rapid decline in the wild, into a farm animal. Researchers at a European Union-financed program, Selfdott, said they had succeeded in spawning the Atlantic bluefin in captivity without hormonal intervention."

Paul Greenberg reports for the New York Times September 4, 2010.