Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Creating "Super Tuna"
motherpusbucket writes "The Telegraph reports that Japanese scientists hope to be breeding a so-called 'Super Tuna' within the next decade or so. They have about 60% of the genome mapped and expect to finish it in the next couple months. The new breed will grow faster, taste good, have resistance to disease and will totally kick your ass if you cross them."
Since this is Japan are we sure that they won't be cybernetic super fish? All hail the new fish overlords!
Have they bred them with frickin' laser beams though?
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I for one, welcome our new tuna overlords.
Lets face it, super food will eat you, besides is obligatory.
After reading all those articles about how the ocean would be depleted of fish, Tuna being one of my favorite fish I approve, now they need to make a super version of whatever Tuna eat.
Sounds like a good idea, rather then fish Tuna to extinction they're solving the problem by make better Tuna.
Now all we have to have to a bigass debate on slashdot about how this is going to make DRM zombie tunas while ignorantly forgetting the fact that "Natural" tuna have had their genes altered through hundreds of years of breading.. Basically like every other time DNA altering comes up in a story..
A modify the DNA so that few dozen Sharks Fins appear on the new fish.
Perhaps they could save the real thing from extinction.
Then again the 'Green Lobby' would rise up against 'Genetically Modified Fish' Sigh.
Yes -- but will they be equipped with lasers?
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
Davegravy slaps Captain Splendid around a bit with a Super Tuna
'nuf said...
Proverbs 21:19
I predict they will genetically enhance the necessary parts to incorporate them into the weird porn industry that thrives in Japan. After the tunas career is up they can still serve his enhanced parts as a rare delicacy in restaurants.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
As long as the ninja tuna are identified clearly so in the packaging, I whole-heartedly support this idea, but they should leave the wild tuna alone. I would even donate money to the Japanese if they would leave the wild tuna alone and create an artificial ocean with military protection so that the ninja tuna don't accidentally breed with wild tuna.
The article talks about targeting aquaculture farmers, but I suppose it is possible the genetically altered tuna could escape into the wild and breed with wild tuna. Assuming the genes will be patented like Monsanto does with seeds, will fishermen be sued for catching such cross bred tuna?
are they implying that the current tuna doesn't taste good? "The new breed will grow faster, taste good,"
Damn, and I thought husbands were already whipped.
It's a tunami!
Sent from your iPad.
People have been altering the genetics of plants and animals for as long as we have practiced agriculture.
However, doing this with modern techniques can present incredible risks, possibly as large as the risks
we face from environmental damage. There are significant consequences to altering genomes of existing
creatures, and mostly, people would try to be as careful as possible. Most all of the changes we've made
have been exceedingly helpful.
But there are a few unavoidable truths:
1- Humans cannot contain nature indefinitely - so whatever we create will eventually enter the environment and compete with the existing species.
2- Genomes, the resulting organism, and the myriad interaction with other species, viruses, and environmental conditions
are far too complex for humans predict any outcome reliably. We are blindly stabbing at potentially world-changing effects.
3- "Monocultures" increase risk. Even if this program is wildly successful, and they create a huge supply of "perfect" Tuna - they will be a single species, and their success will be a risk - a single other species or virus could wipe them out.
We want to establish a complete aquaculture system that will produce fish that have good strength, are resistant to disease, grow quickly and taste delicious.
In many ways TFA sounds a lot like the mentality Monsanto has: make more food for more people with fewer resources. This is completely backwards, and will fail us in a devastating way long term. Food availability is the single most important factor that drives population growth. The solution we need is not to re-engineer nature to meet the demands of growing populations better, but rather to focus on moderating the needs of people to fit within a natural environment created over 2 billions years which we *cannot* recreate if we destroy it.
In the end, the environment we live in has much "momentum" and "power" to inflict damage to the human race than we have power to control and shift the natural world to our needs.
Do you like fishsticks?
Do you like to put fishsticks in your mouth?
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
May I be the first to welcome our new Tuna overloards...
No you may not.
May I be the first to say you can tune a filesystem but you can't tuna fish. Oh wait, someone beat me to it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Can't we start with something simpler and get some super yeast meant for beer!
What's next, A Tuna Christmas?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Cheap Super tuna Sashimi. Wohoooooo!
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
Even if it lowers the cost, it won't especially matter much, will it? You can't entirely remove tuna from the ecosystem as a consumer, and they get a lot of mercury in their diet, pass it along. Eastern little tuna are lower in mercury according to Wikipedia, but they're specifically mapping and going to be modifying bluefin tuna.
This doesn't terribly seem like the most sensible idea to invest large amounts of time and money in if it's just going to produce more fish that you can't safely consume greater amounts of. You've got mass lead poisonings coming out of China; in 10 or 20 years, will you get mass mercury poisonings thanks to Japan and this project?
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
Sounds great, what could possibly go wrong?
That sounds a little kinkier than necessary for the public internet.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Which bands does it receive? Is it a superheterodyne tuna?
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Cross them?! Cross them with what? Other tuna species? Piranhas? Cmdr Taco?
Or, make them angry? Why would they be, err... angry, at anything?
Stop having a boring tuna. Stop having a boring life.
-- Vince 'Slap Chop' Offer
Tampering with the genes of the tuna shall only create a monstrous and awesome tuna, and it will writhe and flip all over Tokyo, reducing it to rubble.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
that Green Peace had canned this line of research some time ago?
In many ways TFA sounds a lot like the mentality Monsanto has: make more food for more people with fewer resources. This is completely backwards, and will fail us in a devastating way long term. Food availability is the single most important factor that drives population growth.
Seriously, you do. I'm all in favor of trying to limit population growth, as the earth does have limited resources. Most of Europe has birthrates below replacement level, and I haven't heard of any food shortages over there. But you do realize how lack of food limits population growth right? It's not lower birth rates because people in some of the most food insecure nations of the world have the highest birthrates.
Starvation. Primarily of those too weak to defend themselves. That means small children, and often their mothers. Spend some time reading about what starvation does to the body sometime. It's a terrible way to die, and even if it weren't you're cheering for the death of children to stop the growth of population. How can you live with that?
The new breed will grow faster, taste good, have resistance to disease and will totally kick your ass if you cross them.
Uh, does jabbing them in the mouth with a barbed hook not count as "crossing them?" I don't think that's what the tuna fishermen would want.
Clive Cussler gave some reasons NOT to do this in his book "White Death."
Yes, it's fiction, but still....
Destroys the marine ecosystem through a fish monopoly, etc.
Enjoyable book, though.
In Japan, super tuna eat you!
I suppose there's no logical reason they couldn't eventually figure out a way to modify the Tuna to be herbivores. The whole reason they have such high mercury levels is they're at the top of a relatively long ocean food chain. Mercury accumulated in higher level predators because they accumulate almost mercury what was in the bodies of whatever they eat, which have in turn accumulated all the mercury from that ever their food ate and so on.
Of course I have no idea if Tuna raise of soybeans and rice would taste nearly as good, and plenty of people prefer good taste to avoiding toxins.
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Heroes in my sandwich
Tuna Power!
So far there's on idiot down thread to turned this into "let's starve the masses to save the planet" but overall the response has been a lot more reasoned than I expected. Seems DNA altered Tuna is less threatening than DNA altered plants.
I'm drawing a blank, does anyone else have an idea why that would be?
Humanity is not sufficiently advanced to no longer be faced with the issues you bring up.
How can we effectively maintain neutrality while attempting to manhandle nature for purposes that directly serve humanity?
When humans understand their inherent centrality in this World, and become responsible enough to maintain that centrality (while utilizing all this awesome "intellect" people cite when making arguments like this) to 'tweak' settings on the "Big Machine", the argument will dissolve.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are 4 years old. It occurs to you that cookies are the penultimate foodstuff, and no foods other than cookies matter, for any purpose, public or private, visible or invisible.
Imagine, also, that you are endowed with *some* of the creative potential and scientific capability to affect this change in yours, and the the lives of all other 4 year olds, forevermore.
Now, fast-forward to age 16, when you obese, toothless, malnourished (yes, you can be all three), and by effect of your actions, your peers and their children are similarly afflicted. Because of the alteration of what I will call "the continuum of persistent reality", you have altered your own ability to maintain compatibility with any other continuum, and thus have altered the ability of any other organism affected by your choices to regain their own, rightfully entitled arc along a projected path.
In short, you fuck it up for everybody, whether they like it or not, whether they recognize the problem, or not.
and I, for one, welcome our ichthyous overlords!
Or you know, we could just stop overfishing them.
WTF is wrong with you people?
Instead of questioning ourselves on our energy consumption, we just hope that tomorrow will bring new photovoltaic modules with 12000% efficiency.
Instead of questioning ourselves on the fact that we eat too much meat and fish, we keep on depleting fish resources around the world, while some Japanese (incidentally, the biggest tuna consumers & fishers) scientists might come with a super-tuna "next decade or so".
Problem is, it might already be too late.
It is high time we learned to take some responsibilities and stop relying on dubious techno-science stuff.
They're huge, they're incredibly fast, and they have tasty meat. In fact, their meat has some pretty amazing properties, for a fish. It's just that we're probably over-fishing them, which is why the Japanese want to breed a 'better' tuna. I prefer chicken-salad anyway.
Heroes in a half can! Tuna Power!
Be relentless!
Will they demand the return of their fallen brethren who have already been processed into fast food?
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
On the American side of the pond few Americans care or think GM is harmful. In Europe almost everyone abhors it. Its gotten bad enough that American grain aid to Dafur and other starving African areas sometimes rots in warehouses because the Euro advisors tell Africans the grainis poisonous.
Yawn. Wake me when they have SuperBeef.
That was StarKist.
buh-dum-pum
So if regular tuna is 'chicken of the sea', what would this super tuna be? 'Ostriches of the sea?'
(Or if you go with PETA's metaphor of 'kittens of the sea', I guess these would be... cougars? Leopards?)
In other news, Microsoft Windows users are now covered under the Americans with Disabilties Act...
Scientists: We created a super strain of tuna that is better in every possible way. Can we release it into the ocean?
Environmentalists: No.
Scientists: Please?
Environmentalists: Will it take over existing species?
Scientists: Yes but it will also make it easier/cheaper to feed the world population.
Environmentalists: No.
Conservation sounds like a good idea and all but how sweet would it be if the ocean was full of super salmon and super tuna that had the qualities mentioned here? If we created a super fish that was a source of food for these larger fish and also reproduced extra fast we could theoretically get so much more of our food from the ocean.
People are always mentioning pollution from livestock farming. I don't know if this is actually a significant factor in global warming type concerns, but it would be interesting to know how much greener we would be if we farmed super tuna instead of cattle.
Even if more than a few species of fish went extinct, I say it would be worth it.
Instead of spending money on this kind of research, why don't they invest in policing their fishing fleets better so the existing Tuna stock won't be depleted in a few years?
Ninja Tuna: http://www.mrscruff.com/
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Heroes in my sandwich
Tuna Power!
So sorry I used my mod points already.
Even more sorry that I sang your post.
IANAGB (Genetic Biologist)
but wouldn't this make them more susceptible to cancer. Or does the Omega 3 grow faster too inhibiting this near mutation/catastrophe.
Jeff Goldblum, is that you?
but you can't tuna fish.
Hopefully they aren't to productive...
What could possible go wrong you ask? This could...
You call be parinoid, just wait and see, lol.
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
Make them very small and dispense them like candy.
The kids will eat em up!
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Someone tell the Japanese we already HAVE "super tuna"... it's called a "whale", and the Japanese are harvesting them into extinction.
The Japanese could do a lot of good for the world's fisheries if they gave up fish for 1 hear, and hunted JELLYFISH.
Jellyfish are about all that is left of marine life, near the Japanese coast.
Super Tuna: overwhelms bad guys with his amazing taste, fast growth and resistance to disease
Dominant Dolphin: with a snout that can penetrate any armor
Excellent Eel: zaps bad guys before turning them over to the authorities
Outrageous Octopus: with super suction cups that can be used to lift and hurl heavy objects
I hereby retain all rights to the above characters.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
They aren't fluffy or cuddly, so nobody would care about harvesting dumb whales.
Give the super-tuna a taste for jellyfish and we are all set.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Super tuna sex pics in 3...2...1
Super Tuna Fish! FUCK YEAH!!!! Coming again to save the motherfucking day, yeah!
Oh wait, tuna *FISH*! Uh..nevermind.
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read." -Groucho Marx
Sandwich!? I want a Spicy SuperTuna Roll.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I have read that they are also trying to turn this species into vegetarians (tuna are predators). There is a worry that the stock of feed fish they use could be impacted by large scale tuna farming. Supposedly, Scandinavians have been trying to do this (unsuccessfully) with salmon as well.
That sounds a little kinkier than necessary for the public internet.
In Canada we have no expectation of privacy on the internet, hence there is no "private internet".
/.
Might as well post it on
Heroes in my sandwich
Dude i herd u like heroes, so I put a hero in your gyro so you can eat while you eat.
It also happens to smell just as bad coming out as it does going in: have you ever been in the bathroom when someone who has eaten a lot of tuna recently is taking a piss?
Releasing a "new improved" predator into an already overfished sea strikes me as absurdly dumb.
I, for one, welcome our new mutant tuna fish overlords
maybe they'll make a supertuna with spiciness built into it. i love me some spicy tuna rolls.
Toro! Toro! Toro!
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
In less than 50 years this "super" tuna will mate inter-species and the resultant "Godzilla" will come out from the sea and destroy Tokyo.
This will be a chance for them to bring back Godzilla for another round, but this time in IMAX-3D for the ultimate monster effects film with absolute minimalist plot.
Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's swimming and screaming.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
.... you know the rest....
For their crazy antics will either keep us entertained for thousands of years to come or they will be the end of us all.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Yup, Anonymous Coward it is.
Just a couple of things. Lots of rant about poor starving Africans, but how is this Japanese "Super" Tuna going to benefit them? Are the Japanese going to send them all over there after harvest? I doubt it. Bringing starving Africans into the debate is just an emotional blackmail.
Also, all the people saying how we've been genetically modifiying stuff for hundreds of years, sure, but how long does it take for selective breeding to actually show an outcome? This isn't selective breeding, it's creating a new creature from scratch! They are taking thousands of years of mutation and cramming it into 1 generation!
I'm no alarmist by any means, but I think we should stand back and take a look at what might come out of this rather than just saying progress for progress' sake.
a) breed well
b) taste good
c) 4x the size of a whale
d) Pay tax
China is a MASSIVE mercury polluter. India is likely going to join that. Right now, about 1/2 of the mercury in the fish comes from China. Considering that China will accelerate the building of Coal plants, more will be added into to the oceans.
How about they make the tuna that does not sequester Mercury? That could save a LOT of lives.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How did that get modded troll? Its spot on. The problem with new biotechnology isn't the logical scientific arguments that can be made against it. The problem is the emotional, irrational arguments that can be made repeatedly and loudly and with a few conspiracies thrown in for good measure. That's not to say that all arguments against it are total bullshit that a handful of clueless douchebags pulled out their asses one day, but by and large that is the case, and while it does indeed present potential dangers, the potential benefits are just phenomenal.
The fact is that every living organism is controlled by genes. Just like altering a computer's hardware and software also alters performance accordingly, sufficient genetic alteration to useful organisms could do damn near anything. Those endless possibilities are simply too good to pass up. It's just a shame that we've got to cut through so much popular bullshit about the subject.
...welcome our quantum brain wave-emitting tuna.
They'll be awesome at piloting underwater mobile suits.
an unfortunately-placed screen smudge caused me to read that as 'herpes in my sandwich'.
ive been -1 troll plenty of times for not towing the party line like a good little slashbot
but i thought this line of thought was something many slashdotters would actually agree too
its pretty odd to find a partisan crowd of luddites with modpoints on this website. interesting
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, if its the Japanese are working on it, maybe we'll have a choice of getting tuna meat pink or baby blue.
Dwarf Fortress is way ahead of them: "I think I made fish too hardcore" --Toady One
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Carp
Coincidence. This very same week scientists from SPANISH INSTITUTE OF OCEANOGRAPHY IEO have succeed in getting millions of Red tuna eggs from same "generation" (I don't know the exact term in english, sorry) Difference between previous attemps being in the low number of eggs til now.
... Scientists have inducted hormones to the tuna and have gotten those 5 million eggs between monday and wednesday this week. They are starting the next phase of the project wich is about developing those larva...
Aprox. translation from El Pais news
"A team of scientifics from IEO has gotten several red tuna (Thunnus thynnus) lays of about 5 million eggs each...
Very very good news for sushi lovers (me myself!!) but BETTER news for one of the most overexploitted fish on the sea.
...from its metabolism ?
Do this means that the japanese factory ships wil not to continue destroying South American oceans only to fish OUR natural resources?
If yes, GOOD.
How to save time making tuna salad sandwiches..
Idea: Feed mayonnaise to tuna fish.
-- Billy Blaze
...it will make you get the craziest diseases that nobody ever heard about, but who cares if you can get it cheap, right?
Watch Food, Inc.!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.