July 1, 2024 — Pacific bluefin tuna have beat decades of overfishing and fully rebounded — 10 years earlier than expected, experts said.
This milestone is a surprise and triumph for scientists worldwide who were tasked with helping to revive the species.
“This is an amazingly resilient fish and the new assessment is showing us that,” Dr. Huihua Lee, a research mathematical statistician at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a June 25 news release from the administration.
The fish’s restoration can be seen in the latest stock assessment detailed in the news release.
Bluefin populations are measured based on their “unfished spawning stock biomass,” which is the hypothetical number of fish there would be in the absence of fishing.