Endangered
Southern bluefin tuna
Thunnus maccoyii
The southern bluefin tuna is a tuna of the family Scombridae found in open southern Hemisphere waters of all the world's oceans mainly between 30°S and 50°S, to nearly 60°S.
The ray-finned fish
At up to 2.5 metres (8 ft 2 in) and weighing up to 260 kilograms (570 lb), it is among the larger bony fishes.
Range and habitat
This allows the fish to maintain a high rate of oxygen consumption as it continually swims out to others areas of oceans in search of food and ground for growth and reproduction. The southern bluefin tuna is a tuna of the family Scombridae found in open southern Hemisphere waters of all the world's oceans mainly between 30°S and 50°S, to nearly 60°S.
Attempts to establish or expand tuna ranching in waters close to the Sir Joseph Banks group, Kangaroo Island, Louth Bay and Granite Island have been met with public opposition on environmental grounds.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Scientists have tried and continue to try to develop less expensive fish feed. The annual costs of diet for research alone is approximately US$100,000 and there are additional problems associated with working with large, fast-swimming marine animals.
Research evaluating ingredients for use in southern bluefin tuna feed is ongoing, and gathering information on ingredient digestibility, palatability and nutrient utilisation and interference can improve lower costs for tuna ranchers. This advantage enables them to maintain high metabolic output for predation and migrating large distances.
In crisis
Fishing pressure outside the allocated global TAC remains a major concern. The southern bluefin tuna is classified as an endangered species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened species. It had been reclassified from Critically Endangered in September 2021.
As of 2020, the current mean population estimate is 13% of unfished levels. Its stock status remains "overfished", though it is not currently subjected to overfishing.
Southern bluefin tuna is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Southern bluefin tuna, Wikidata item Q1142258. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
