Yahoo News 4 Mar 08;
An Australian aquaculture company claimed a world first Tuesday in artificially breeding endangered southern bluefin tuna.
Clean Seas Tuna said the successful collection of significant quantities of tuna sperm and eggs from captive fish at a breeding facility in South Australia would allow sustainable production of the species.
The breakthrough would allow the company to effectively double Australia's 5,200 tonne southern bluefish tuna annual quota within the next five years, it said in a statement to the Australian stock exchange.
"From a global perspective, successfully recreating the natural breeding cycle of one of the world's premier pelagic fish species is a key step towards ensuring sustainability of this key species at a time when wild stocks are under significant pressure," the company said.
The fish would not be subject to the strict Australian wild catch quotas and there were no trade barriers for their sale into the major markets of Japan, China, the United States and Europe, said chairman Hagen Stehr.
"Clean Seas will now have the ability to stimulate and then satisfy consumer demand for greater quantities of SBT, and we can potentially produce the fish year round," he said.
Clean Seas was listed on the Australian stock exchange in December 2005 and in November last year US-based Simplot, the company behind the John West brand, took a strategic stake in the company, the statement said.
Within half an hour of a trading halt being lifted after the announcement, Clean Seas Tuna shares were up 26.6 percent at 2.14 dollars (2.01 US dollars).
