ROFFS™ Fishy Times Newsletter – 48th Edition – Bluefin Tuna Arrive Off Cape Lookout, Color of Fish Flesh, Seals Deep Diving for Ocean Data & Updated Videos NEWS First Bluefin Tuna of Season Have Arrived off Cape Lookout

Article by: Jerry Dilsaver / Courtesy of northcarolinasportsman.com

They’re baaaaaack. That’s the call bouncing down the Morehead City Waterfront and along the Atlantic Beach Causeway, and it’s about bluefin tuna. The largest members of the tuna family arrived off North Carolina’s Crystal Coast this past weekend after a very conspicuous absence for a handful of years.

“There is a little question as to who might have seen them first, but Maurice Davis and his crew from the Capt. Stacy Fishing Center were the first to land one,” said Joe Shute of Atlantic Beach’s Cape Lookout Fly Shop. “They caught the first one on Sunday, Nov. 30, and added two more on Monday, Dec. 1.

“This is a really good group of fish and contains bluefins from about 70 inches to more than 100 inches,” Shute said. “The biggest one taken so far was 104 inches; it was caught by Capt. John Cawthern and the crew of the Procastinator on Monday. They’re a little thin right now, but they have a little fat and should butterball up pretty quickly with all the bait that’s out there for them. There are big pods of shad from the Trawler out to the Knuckle, and the bluefins are there, fattening back up after their journey.” Above: The first bluefin tuna of the season showed up out of Beaufort Inlet off Atlantic beach this past weekend, and fish appear to have arrived in good numbers.

Q. Why do some fish have white flesh, like flounder and tilapia, while others have red or orange flesh, like tuna and salmon?

A. The difference frequently has to do with a protein called myoglobin that stores oxygen for muscles and also acts as a pigment, said Keith G. Tidball, senior extension associate in the department of natural resources at Cornell University.

Fish that have white flesh are generally those that are resting or mostly inactive throughout their lives, with intermittent short bursts of activity, Dr. Tidball said. Other experts note that the fish get the energy for these bursts mostly by converting glycogen to lactate, rather than by using oxygen. Above: image courtesy of Victoria Roberts.

A group of molting elephant seals is an assault to the nose. Just ask marine biologist Mike Fedak—he spent some time last February with the giant animals, whiffing their feces and hair as they sloughed their skin on the cold, windy beaches of the Edwards Islands, a mile from Antarctica.

Fedak had ventured south as part of a research team that darted, measured, and secured seven of the seals with telemetry tags designed to collect a trove of environmental data as the animals foraged underwater.

“Trying to pass a tape measure under a two-ton giant sausage is not entirely straightforward,” says Fedak, who’s based at the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

The seals are members of a growing pinniped squadron, numbering in the hundreds, that researchers have flagged over the past 10 years with tags designed by the Seal Mammal Research Unit and tailored to gather details on ocean conductivity, temperature, and depth, collectively called “CTD profiles.”

When tagged animals surface, the data they’ve collected are relayed to a global satellite system called Argos, decoded by computers, and disseminated to researchers—including biologists and oceanographers, as well as members of the meterological community. Above: This male Southern elephant seal was tagged on the Edwards Islands as part of the iSTAR project. A telemetry tag designed by the Sea Mammal Research Unit is attached to fur on its head with epoxy glue. The tag, which sends back ocean temperature and salinity profiles via the Argos satellite system, is designed to fall off when the animal next sheds its fur at the annual molt. Photo by Mike Fedak, SMRU, University of St Andrews.