Pelagic Fisheries Lab

05/21/2026

Would you like to learn more about bluefin tuna? Check out this first in our series and learn what fascinating creatures they are.

05/19/2026

05/18/2026

The brain behind the fish!🧠🐟

Our tagging data shows some amazing migration behavior detailing where fish go, but what's more spectacular is how bluefin know where to go in what appears to us as a featureless environment - the open ocean. Theories abound for which mechanisms guide them, but for Atlantic bluefin tuna, the mystery remains. Depending on their location in the ocean, they might only be able to see 20 feet in front of them, yet they can traverse 4,000 miles of open water to enter the nine-mile-wide Straits of Gibraltar with the precision of a GPS. For such a large fish, you would think their brain would be larger than it actually is. In fact, the brain of most fish is about 0.05% of its total weight. For reference, the human brain, on average, is 2% relative to body size, which is 40 times more than bluefin. For a 600-pound bluefin, it's about the size of a U.S. dime!

The next time you see one of our bluefin maps, remember the size of the brain that's behind it. For all you fishermen, Walt likes to joke that this is the brain you are up against as you try to pick your tide, your spot, hide your line, and present your bait! Please note an intact brain might look slightly different to this extracted one.

05/15/2026

We ate with this 🐟🤝🏼

To learn more about our research efforts, visit our website using the link in our bio.

05/07/2026

Excited to see everyone on July 25th from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm at Port Harbor Marine in South Portland, Maine!!!🐟☀️🦀

05/05/2026

This satellite tag was deployed on a 111 inch (281.94 cm) Atlantic bluefin tuna in Canada during October of 2022. The tag stayed on the fish for just under 9 months traveling down the East Coast and eventually entering into the Gulf of Mexico/Gulf of America in Feburary 2023, where it stays for March & April, presumably to spawn. After the fish leaves the Gulf, it heads right back up to Canada. The tag popped off of the fish in June of 2023 very close to where the fish was initially tagged. This fish traveled 10,016.25 cumulative miles. How cool is that?!

05/04/2026

4 WEEKS!!!🐟🧬☀️
We are so excited to see what the 2026 field season will bring! Can’t wait to be spending our days at local Maine fishing tournaments, getting dirty processing Atlantic bluefin tuna heads, and in the lab preparing otoliths and tissue samples for analysis! We are also extremely excited to be bringing on FOUR undergraduate interns this year, and TWO field technicians! Stay TUNED to learn more about our newest tuna team members as June 1 approaches!

📸 Nick Jones Media Co.

04/29/2026

Ever wonder what happens to the Atlantic bluefin tuna otoliths after they are collected? To gather information from these structures, we first have to prepare them for analysis. If you can believe it, we use a jewelry sonicator to clean the otoliths back in the lab! Once the otoliths are cleaned, we use a diamond saw blade to section the otoliths and isolate the primordium, or center of the otolith. After sectioning, we polish the otolith to get a clear view of the annuli, which represent a year of growth for Atlantic bluefin tuna. The annuli are counted to estimate the age of the fish. FUN FACT! This is a very similar process to aging a tree by counting the rings of a stump!

To learn more about the information we can collect from Atlantic bluefin tuna otoliths, please visit our website’s “Our Research Efforts” page!

04/11/2026

We NEED your western Atlantic bluefin tuna SAMPLES!🧬🐟
To learn more about Genetics for Giants & Juvies and the scientific methods of Close-Kin Mark-Recapture, watch our recent YouTube video!

04/08/2026