100 days

In the AGE this morning....if this article can be believed the news is indeed promising.

I wonder why Hagen hasn't approached the market with this news? Also, be nice to know how many fish have reached this milestone. Still very bullish on this one as a speculative play.

Love to all

Puff

Tuna breeding shows 'billion-dollar' promise'
Bridie Smith
July 9, 2009

BREEDING the southern bluefin tuna in captivity has long been considered the holy grail for the Australian tuna industry.

The tuna has almost been wiped out by overfishing, and a sustainable fishery seemed little more than an ambitious dream. But this week at a South Australian hatchery, a young fish (pictured) of 25 centimetres reached a milestone birthday: 100 days, more than five times what captive breeders have been able to achieve previously.

Clean Seas chairman Hagen Stehr said: "Young tuna has never been held that long before onshore."

The project, involving the Australian Seafood Co-operative Research Centre, the Fisheries Research Development Corporation and the South Australian Research and Development Institute, aims to produce 250,000 bluefin at the hatchery outside Arno Bay on the Eyre Peninsula by 2015. "There's a commercial industry in the making of immense proportion," Mr Stehr said. "In years to come, it will be a billion-dollar industry."

Worldwide demand for the southern bluefin tuna is rising. Japan takes about 80 per cent of the catch. The young fish were spawned in April after adult females were given hormone injections. They will be kept in a temperature-controlled hatchery over winter.