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Commercial Fishing: How Fish Get From the High Seas to
Your Supermarket
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Fish who are tangled in the net
are ripped apart when it is reeled in. |
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Purse Seines
Another type of net is a purse seine (pronounced purse 'sAn),
which is the primary method of catching tuna but is also used
for a variety of other fish species.
To catch tuna fish, fishers track pods of dolphins, who commonly
swim with large tuna, and drop a net into the water to surround
the schooling tuna. The edges of the net are slowly cinched
together, trapping hundreds of tuna (usually weighing between
6 to 40 pounds each) in the net, which is then drawn up and
closed like a laundry bag. Purse seining for tuna has aroused
public outrage because dolphins are sometimes caught in the
nets. However, purse seines also kill millions of tuna, intelligent
animals who are just as capable of feeling pain as dolphins.
If they are still alive when they reach the deck of the boat,
large fish such as tuna, cod, and haddock are fully conscious
when their gills are slit and they are disemboweled. Small
fish, like flounder, are dumped onto ice, slowly freezing
to death or being crushed when thousands of their schoolmates
are piled on top of them. Scientists estimate that fish endure
up to 15 minutes of excruciating pain before they lose consciousness.
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More About
Tuna
Canned tuna comes almost exclusively from tuna who have
been caught in purse seines. Smaller tuna like yellowfin
(also called “ahi”) and skipjack can still
be more than 6 feet long and weigh hundreds of pounds.
Tunas have one of the largest ranges of any fish, and
reach a top speed of 40 miles an hour! In the wild,
they can travel more than 100 miles in one day. |
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The top edge of a purse seine
that has encircled and trapped fish is shown in this
aerial photo. It will be drawn closed, and the fish
will be pulled aboard. |
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Hundreds of fish are suffocating
aboard this ship. They will be dropped alive into the
freezer compartment below. |
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In addition to the hundreds
of fish below the surface, a school of dolphins has
been caught in this purse seine. |
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