Aquaculture pioneer Clean Seas Tuna has announced the survival of some of their world-first captive-reared juvenile Southern Bluefin Tuna, beyond the company’s expectations.

Some of the young tuna have now lived for more than 150 days, and survived transfer to sea cages at the company’s Arno Bay facility in South Australia.

Clean Seas Tuna Managing Director Clifford Ashby said the survival of the young tuna was unlikely, with sea temperatures soon to drop to 11C-12C, but that merely making it this far had exceeded the company’s expectations.

“This latest milestone in our breeding and grow-out program has reinforced the company’s confidence in our research and development team as we move steadily towards  commercialisation,” Ashby said.

“This year’s success with world ‘firsts’ in transfers of SBT juveniles to sea cages, diet developments and growth monitoring through to the current winter water temperatures of some 14C, have all combined to produce a most encouraging result for our research and development project,” he said.

The company has now come closer to farming the valuable and threatened Southern Bluefin Tuna than ever before, reaching new world firsts this year.

“The information gleaned from our latest achievements – combined with the Japanese experience from Northern Bluefin Tuna trials – indicates that greater survival will be achievable if we have bigger juveniles going into winter months,” Ashby said.

“Clean Seas has already begun addressing this latest research and development goal and is on track in advancing its spawning program at the maximum advised rate of one month per season. Accordingly, initial SBT spawning for the forthcoming season is scheduled to be brought forward to December this year, with our spawning preparation cycle already well underway.”

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