I was shocked as a kid seeing tuna in an aquarium up close and realizing how big they were. The aquarium kept them in the same tank as the sharks and honestly, I was more intimidated by them than the sharks.
I think I never saw life tuna, but I still remember the scenes from 'The Outsiders of Uskoken Castle' as a kid
(the book/TV series is also known as 'Red Zora')
There are species of tuna that can reach up to 4.5m. But most canned tuna is Skipjack or Albacore and they can "only" get up to 0.8m (skipjack) and 1m (albacore).
Still pretty big though. But the huge ones are mostly sold at auction for sushi afaik
I used Google image search for "Atlantic bluefin tuna". I admit that seeing so many people proudly posing with their giant dead fish is like seeing safari hunters posing with their large dead game in Africa. It just seems in bad taste. Congrats, you killed a huge animal?! It almost makes me want to become a vegetarian.
It’s always the smiling that rubs me the wrong way.
Like ok I can respect hunters getting meat from nature vs a factory farm, but when your standing in blood smiling ear to ear because you took a life and then photograph it to brag to your like minded friends, it gets pretty weird and psychopathic.
I had to look it up - only a couple of aquariums in the world have bluefin (the largest species) in captivity, most that keep tuna have yellowfin and skipjack, large fish but not nearly as big as bluefin.
If you are counting individual fish (independent of size) and you count all sea creatures, I think this is false. The "vegetation" are small creatures like phytoplankton, and the fish that eat them probably vastly outnumber the fish that eat fish. Each stage of the food change contains about an order of magnitude less fish than the level below.
Most small fish eat small crustaceans and other small animals, not algae.
Most phytoplankton, i.e. unicellular algae, is eaten by zooplankton, i.e. mostly by small crustaceans, like copepods.
The fish that eat other animals vastly outnumber the fish that eat algae or aquatic plants.
In open water environments, the kinds of bigger animals, i.e. fish, cephalopods, chaetognaths, cnidarians, ctenophores are almost all predators who, unless they eat each other, they are eating zooplankton that consists mostly of small crustaceans and of planktonic larvae of the animals that live on the bottom.
> The fish that eat other animals vastly outnumber the fish that eat algae or aquatic plants.
This is why I said "if you count all sea creatures". The original comment said "most fish are predators because there isn't much vegetation". As you say, there is quite a lot of vegetation, and there are many more sea creatures in that category than there are predators.
So, most fish are predators, but not at all for the reason in the original comment. It remains true that population and total biomass drop off exponentially as you go up in the food chain (which is really the only point I was trying to make).
The main reason while the majority of big aquatic animals are eating other animals, while the majority of the big terrestrial animals are eating plants, is the disparity in size between big animals and most aquatic primary producers, which requires at least one intermediate layer of small animals, who gather efficiently the small algae, packaging the nutrients and energy into bigger bodies, which can be gathered efficiently by the big animals.
Ok but at the point where you're defining "fish" as "all aquatic life" and "vegetation" as "plankton" (is yeast vegetation too?) you've kind of gotten away from what I meant.
Cows can get big by eating grass because most of the land is covered in plants, but tuna can't get big by eating seaweed because most of the sea is abyss.
There is a lot of phytoplankton, plant-like algae. Though apparently most fish don't eat it directly. Zooplankton (which consumes phytoplankton) seems to be a more common food source for fish. You could call a fish eating zooplankton a "predator" because zooplankton are non-plant algae, but that stretches the definition.
Anyway, tuna don't just eat zooplankton, they eat smaller fish.
I'm not a marine biologist but my understanding is that oceanic food chains are very complex and it's not just orca -> tuna -> sardine -> plankton. Most fish larger than a sardine eat only smaller fish and there's a huge web of various sizes of creature all of which behave in predatory behaviour. Certainly most/all fish large enough to be considered a meal to humans are going to be predators.
I have no idea about biomass ratios, but I'm pretty sure there are more species of fish that eat other fish than not.
Fish mainly eat copepods (a type of zooplankton), which are tiny crustaceans (1-2 mm) carried around by the sea current like algae. Not other fish. Tuna do mainly eat other fish.
There are risks of disease and parasites from eating mammalian predators that are not a risk with fish.
Predators are also a lot more expensive to raise as domestic animals. Pigs are omnivores, and chickens will eat some small animals. We feed them what is cheap. Animal feeds do sometimes contain waste meat or fish.
People do eat reptilian predators. I have eaten crocodile and monitor lizard, a number of others are eaten.
My family has run a restaurant in Almuñécar, on the south coast of Spain, without interruption since July 1975. My grandparents started it, and my father created the model we still follow. He loved fishing and cooking, so he joined the two: he bought only fresh fish and seafood, every day, from the municipal market and local fishermen, and served everything without bones. His motto was "if you find a bone, your food and drinks are on us." We still haven't had to treat anyone.
My father passed away last year, and I've been cooking in his place. Fitting for this article, we've helped make little tunny (Euthynnus alletteratus, "bacoreta" here) popular again in our town.
The tuna history here goes back a long way. Almuñécar was the Roman town of Sexi, named by Julius Caesar himself, and our restaurant sits right in front of the remains of its fish-salting factory, one of the most important in the Roman Empire. Sexi minted its own coins, with two tuna on them. It was also famous for a "psychedelic" garum made for the Roman elite from salema (Sarpa salpa), a fish people here call "siete cólicas".
Thanks for asking! It’s called Restaurante La Najarra, in Almuñécar, right in front of Parque del Majuelo, where the remains of the Roman fish-salting factory are. If you ever make it there, try the bacoreta, and let me know if you find any bones :)
30 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 26.7 ms ] threadStill pretty big though. But the huge ones are mostly sold at auction for sushi afaik
One posing picture with lots of blood I found particularly appalling. https://wonews.com/recent-assessment-shows-bluefin-tuna-numb... (warning: don't click if you can't look at blood.)
I guess for me, empathy with animals is strongly correlated with their size.
Like ok I can respect hunters getting meat from nature vs a factory farm, but when your standing in blood smiling ear to ear because you took a life and then photograph it to brag to your like minded friends, it gets pretty weird and psychopathic.
It's also the fact that these animals regularly live 30 to 40 years.
Most phytoplankton, i.e. unicellular algae, is eaten by zooplankton, i.e. mostly by small crustaceans, like copepods.
The fish that eat other animals vastly outnumber the fish that eat algae or aquatic plants.
In open water environments, the kinds of bigger animals, i.e. fish, cephalopods, chaetognaths, cnidarians, ctenophores are almost all predators who, unless they eat each other, they are eating zooplankton that consists mostly of small crustaceans and of planktonic larvae of the animals that live on the bottom.
> The fish that eat other animals vastly outnumber the fish that eat algae or aquatic plants.
This is why I said "if you count all sea creatures". The original comment said "most fish are predators because there isn't much vegetation". As you say, there is quite a lot of vegetation, and there are many more sea creatures in that category than there are predators.
So, most fish are predators, but not at all for the reason in the original comment. It remains true that population and total biomass drop off exponentially as you go up in the food chain (which is really the only point I was trying to make).
The main reason while the majority of big aquatic animals are eating other animals, while the majority of the big terrestrial animals are eating plants, is the disparity in size between big animals and most aquatic primary producers, which requires at least one intermediate layer of small animals, who gather efficiently the small algae, packaging the nutrients and energy into bigger bodies, which can be gathered efficiently by the big animals.
Cows can get big by eating grass because most of the land is covered in plants, but tuna can't get big by eating seaweed because most of the sea is abyss.
Anyway, tuna don't just eat zooplankton, they eat smaller fish.
I have no idea about biomass ratios, but I'm pretty sure there are more species of fish that eat other fish than not.
Predators are also a lot more expensive to raise as domestic animals. Pigs are omnivores, and chickens will eat some small animals. We feed them what is cheap. Animal feeds do sometimes contain waste meat or fish.
People do eat reptilian predators. I have eaten crocodile and monitor lizard, a number of others are eaten.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2512066123
My father passed away last year, and I've been cooking in his place. Fitting for this article, we've helped make little tunny (Euthynnus alletteratus, "bacoreta" here) popular again in our town.
The tuna history here goes back a long way. Almuñécar was the Roman town of Sexi, named by Julius Caesar himself, and our restaurant sits right in front of the remains of its fish-salting factory, one of the most important in the Roman Empire. Sexi minted its own coins, with two tuna on them. It was also famous for a "psychedelic" garum made for the Roman elite from salema (Sarpa salpa), a fish people here call "siete cólicas".