The first tuna for the season arrived off Port Lincoln, Australia last weekend.
The hard-working crew at MG Kailis and their technicians have already sampled, counted and transferred the fish to their new home, a 40-metre pontoon on the other side of Boston Island.
The next batch of tuna, belonging to Tony's Tuna International, should arrive just in time for New Year's Eve, while other tuna companies Blaslov and the Stehr Group are also on their way back with tuna.
Reports are the fish in the Great Australian Bight seemed plentiful, but a potential oversupply of tuna into Japan continues to make marketing the locally caught fish more difficult.
Kailis’ tuna division general manager John Isle said the first fish arrived on the weekend with the transfer being completed last week.
Second in line to return is the Tony’s Tuna tow cage, which should enter the Passage tomorrow arriving at the lease site at the back of Boston Island sometime on Wednesday night, New Year’s Eve.
Tony's Tuna farm manager Leith Whittaker said the plan was to have the crew on the tow cage back into town as soon as possible so they could celebrate, and the transfer would be made in the New Year.
The company then almost immediately planned to send tuna spotter Kiwi White back into the air with the catcher boat heading out again sometime between tomorrow January 3 and January 5 to get a second batch of tuna.
Other companies also plan to send crews straight back out for more fishing.
While the tuna companies were hopeful for improved prices this year, tuna industry spokesman Brian Jeffriess said the picture was far from clear.
Tuna companies should have no problem catching fish as early indications were the schools in the Bight were plentiful.
But he said it appeared that most of the northern bluefin tuna now being farmed in the Mediterranean, thought to be anywhere between 15,000 and 20,000 tons, had yet to be harvested.
â€The longer the fish stay in the pontoons the greater the risk,†Mr. Jeffriess said, with growers in Spain and Malta already dealing with two mortality events.
Mr. Jeffriess said analysts were predicting that much of the European fish would be marketed not to the Japanese but to sushi bars and supermarkets in Europe where demand for tuna was growing.