BLUEFIN RESURGENCE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

A once all-but-forgotten fishery is rebounding nicely

- DAVE LEWIS

WHEN I INITIALLY SAT DOWN to pen this feature, the working title was "A Day's Fishing for Tuna off Plymouth." Now, before the confusion sets in, Plymouth, Massachusetts, sits pretty much in the epicenter of a hugely productive New England bluefin fishery, practically within spitting distance of iconic fishing grounds such as the Stellwagen Bank and many others. But I'm not referring to the Plymouth in Massachusetts, nor any of the more than 30 US cities, towns and communities that share the name of the first Thanksgiving locale. Rather, this is referring to the original Plymouth in Devon, the historic naval city at the mouth of the River Tamar on the southwest coast of the United Kingdom.

It wasn't that many years ago that anyone planning on fishing for tuna anywhere off the British Isles would have been dismissed as being hugely optimistic, at best. Fortunately, that is certainly not the case today. Sometime around the turn of the new millennium, reports started filtering through various angling grapevines of shoals of bluefin tuna off the coast of County Donegal and elsewhere along northwestern Ireland. Not long afterward, the first Irish tuna was landed on rod and reel. Over the following years, the number of fish sighted and caught-off the Irish coast increased substantially, quickly reaching the point where, for several years now, Ireland has been able to boast a hugely successful sport-fishing industry, for what are often large fish. The current Irish bluefin record is 968 pounds, caught in 2001 by Capt. Adrian Molloy. He was one of the first skippers in the region to recognize the huge potential of this world-class fishery, and today, he is widely considered one of the most successful tuna captains in the Emerald Isle.

PROBLEMS ARISE