Tuna Crashes Into Window And Dies ff

A 229-pound bluefin tuna was found dead Monday morning in the popular Outer Bay Exhibit at Monterey Bay Aquarium in the USA, after slamming head first into the tank's 13-inch acrylic window the night before.

A review of a digital camera system trained on the million-gallon tank showed the fish swimming closely with two other tunas, said aquarium spokeswoman Karen Jeffries. Then the male bluefin, the size of a short person at 5 feet, 6 inches long, suddenly smashed onto the tank's window at 5:34 p.m. Sunday afternoon, as recorded by digital cameras in the aquarium.

Aquarium curators who performed a necropsy, or animal autopsy, told Jeffries that the impact would have caused sudden death.

Workers arriving early Monday morning found the dead tuna on the bottom of the tank, one of two aquariums in the world that exhibit tuna. The other is in Japan.

The aquarium was opened until 8 p.m. Sunday, but it’s not clear whether any visitors witnessed “the collision”, as described by Jeffries. Bluefin tuna can swim 12 to 18 miles an hour.

Although rare, Jeffries said it’s not the first time that a tuna in the aquarium has died as a result of smashing onto tank walls. She said she did not know how many have died since the exhibit - a display of open ocean fish - opened in 1996.

Aquarium experts and researchers have worked for years to devise ways to prevent open ocean fish like the bluefin from running into walls. At Monterey, the thick acrylic wall between fish and visitors is veiled with a “bubble curtain” at nighttime, a sensory and visual signal to fish to prevent them from hitting the window.

The impressive tank has a varied collection of ocean fish: yellowfin and bluefin tuna, bonito, barracuda, dolphin fish, hammer head sharks, Galapagos sharks, Mola Mola, black sea turtles, a large school of sardines and pacific mackerel.

In the wild, bluefin tuna are the giant marathoners of the deep, swimming thousands of miles to hunt for food, and to return to spawn where they were born. Pacific Bluefin can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh 1,200 pounds, according to the Tuna Research and Conservation Center in Monterey.

Tuna researchers at the center, a collaboration between the Hopkins Marine Station and the aquarium, will study the remains of the bluefin tuna.