A recent bluefin tuna catch was so massive that it couldn’t fit inside the boat, instead having to be towed to port and lifted with a forklift crane. Marc Towers, from Ghana, landed the 1,000-pound bluefin tuna off Canso, Nova Scotia.
Neil Cooke, who was with Towers, said to the media, “It took Marc two hours to pull in. We started to see the shape of it when the skipper said, ‘This could be a big fish.'”
“The deckhand made a lasso and tied it around the end of the fish,” said Cook, “and we dragged it through the water back to the dock.”
It may be a monster, but it’s not a world record. The current world-record bluefin tuna weight is 1,496 pounds, caught by Ken Fraser in 1979 off Nova Scotia, according to the International Gamefish Association (IGFA).
The Daily Mail reports that Towers’ tuna will yield about 20,000 pieces of sushi and is expected to sell for more than $32,000 to a buyer in Japan.
In 2011, after stock numbers began to increase, NOAA announced that Atlantic bluefin tuna do not warrant species protection under the Endangered Species Act.