Biology Reference
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designed plastic tuna stretchers. Now, with the tank and life-support sys-
tem finally completed, everything seemed ready to give live tuna a try.
In August 1991, we chartered Ted Dunn's long-range sportfishing boat,
the Shogun , out of San Diego. One hundred ten feet in length, it car-
ried three large holding tanks below deck; in addition, it had four smaller
on-deck bait tanks for holding live anchovies. Ted told us that the pre-
vious year he'd caught a few small yellowfin tuna and kept them in one
of his large holding tanks for a number of days, and they seemed to
do just fine.
This was most encouraging. We were optimistic about keeping tuna
alive long enough to bring them into Moss Landing Harbor. Here the
Shogun could tie up at MBARI's dock across the narrow road from our
holding tank in the old warehouse, and from there it would be a short,
quick trip for each fish from the boat to our tank.
At last, the time came to board the boat in San Diego and begin our
hunt for the elusive migrating albacore. Ted Dunn had heard through
the fishermen's grapevine that albacore had been caught a hundred miles
o¤ San Diego. We headed there, but trolling feathered albacore lures for
many hours produced nothing. He'd also heard that there were fish far
to the north, outside the Farallon Islands o¤ San Francisco. So we headed
north, with two trolling lines out at all times. A day and a night's run
got us to the Farallons, but although we spotted a couple of other boats,
we hooked up no fish and heard no radio reports of others catching fish.
Continuing north, we unfortunately headed right into a progressively
worsening swell coming down from a storm in the Gulf of Alaska. Fi-
nally, o¤ Cape Mendocino, the swell was so large that Ted decided he'd
better turn around and head back south. We were now running down-
hill with sixteen-foot swells chasing us, and there was danger of an ex-
tra large wave breaking right over the stern of the boat. With the trolling
lines still out, Ted posted a crewmate to watch for such breaker swells.
Whenever he saw a big one coming he gave a whistle blast, and Norm
Kagawa, the skipper, would give the boat more power to keep ahead
of it.
Finally, after many days of continuous fishing, we hooked up two
nice fifteen-pound albacore on our way home. Hand over hand they
were brought to the stern, lifted in by the leader, and dropped into the
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