The Australian Broadcasting Commission ran over six minutes of video on the breakthrough achieved by CleanSeas Tuna in Port Lincoln South Australia. Cleanseas Chairman Hagen Stehr recounts the critical steps in the process of collecting the first fertilised egg produced by a Southern Bluefin Tuna in captivity.

The video segment may be viewed by clicking on this link. Breakthrough boosts fishing industry.

The transcript of the story is available here.

Vodcasts of the video ‘Breakthrough boosts fishing industry’ may be downloaded here.

Clean Seas Tuna Limited announced a world first breakthrough by becoming the first organisation in the world to create an artificial breeding regime for Southern Bluefin Tuna on March 4, 2008.

During the First Stakeholders Meeting held in Brussels on 22 March 2007 fish breeding challenges for the future were defined by Hervé Chavanne from Istituto Lazzaro Spallanzani. Hervé defined the current focus of breeding activities as growth, fillet quality, external appearance, sexual maturity, processing traits and disease resistance.

Hervé defined the emerging challenges as:

• Include new traits in the selection indexes
• Develop robust animals suited to farming conditions
• Reduce the environmental impact of farming
• Raise the public awareness of breeding practices
• Integrate genomic tools in new selection strategies
• Appraise genetic gain through benchmarking

The Aquabreeding project involves 6 industrial representatives and 5 research organisations representing the major European aquaculture species. The Aquabreeding website includes an array of excellent resources including recent information on breeding and genetics for the major fish species farmed in Europe.

The species reviews provide breeding information and give an overview of knowledge gaps for each major species in order to define industrial research priorities. Typically 10 -14 pages, the species reviews provide state of the art of breeding and reproduction for major aquaculture species. Each review contains a list of references. The species covered by the reviews include: Atlantic Salmon, Rainbow Trout, Seabream, Seabass, Common Carp, Charrs, Atlantic Cod, Brown Trout, Turbot, Tilapia, Wrasse and Sturgeon.

People interested in the work conducted through this project can sign up to receive additional information as the project progresses.

Hervé’s presentation from March 2007 may be viewed here.

A unique form of genetic fingerprinting for salmon is being used to:

• increase weight gain performance
• increase resistance to amoebic gill disease
• reduce the incidence of early maturation
• improved carcase characteristics

The fin-clipping exercise is unique among selective breeding programs worldwide. The tiny fin samples are used to ‘DNA fingerprint’ each fish and determine its family tree. Without this capability, the 140 salmon families produced each year would have to be kept in separate tanks until large enough to tag, an expensive exercise that would subject the families to different ‘nursery’ conditions, making it difficult to compare their performance.

Tiny fin samples are used to ‘DNA fingerprint’ each fish and determine its family tree. The Wayatinah tag team recorded a ten-fold difference in the weights of the young salmon. With 30–40 per cent of this variation attributable to genetic rather than environmental factors, this encouraging finding suggests great performance gains can be made by breeding from the best bloodlines.

Progeny from the breeding program will be provided by Saltas to Tasmanian salmon growers as smolt for commercial production, and to hatcheries as eggs and young fish (to smolt stage) for growing into broodstock.

Additional information about the program is available here.

Clean Seas Tuna Limited has successfully induced reproductive maturation among male Southern Bluefin Tuna broodstock housed in the company’s purpose-built, land-based breeding facility at Arno Bay, South Australia. It is the first time in the world that reproductive maturation of Southern Bluefin Tuna has been achieved under controlled conditions and is a major step towards achieving the company’s long-term goal of breeding and growing out Southern Bluefin Tuna from its own broodstock. The world-first breakthrough was achieved using hormonal therapy developed in Europe to mimic the natural production of hormones by wild fish, and was undertaken with the cooperation and supervision of internationally acclaimed tuna scientists, Professor Christopher Bridges (University of Dusseldorf) and Dr Constantinos Mylonas (Hellenic Centre for Marine Research). The technique also has been successfully used to induce spawning in Atlantic Bluefin Tuna – a close relative species of Southern Bluefin Tuna. The courtship behaviour and release of sperm by the captive Southern Bluefin Tuna was documented using underwater video observations. The broodstock will continue to be monitored with the expectation of completing their reproductive maturation and producing viable (fertilised) eggs. Further information about the breakthrough is available here.