Searching for Atlantic bluefin tuna larvae and more in the Slope Sea
The NOAA Vessel Gordon Gunter departed on June 10 from Newport, Rhode Island, and immediately headed off the continental shelf to water deeper than 1,000 meters (about 3,300 feet) known as the Slope Sea. The Slope Sea is an area of the ocean that is bounded to the north and west by the northeast United States Continental Shelf and to the south by the Gulf Stream, whose dynamic currents provide a strong influence over the area.,,, In recent decades, the common view of Atlantic bluefin tuna was that they spawned only in two places, the Mediterranean Sea in the Eastern Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico in the western Atlantic. However, in the summer of 2013 two cruises sampled the Slope Sea, both of them achieving noteworthy catch rates of early-stage bluefin tuna larvae. These collections were consistent with a hypothesis first put forward in the 1950s that the Slope Sea was a third spawning ground for this species. Follow up sampling in 2016 again achieved notable catch rates of bluefin tuna larvae. click here to read the story 15:37
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