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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."
Have they bred them with frickin' laser beams though?
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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.
'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.
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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?
It's a tunami!
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Since this is Japan, we would need to be more worried about tentacles. Anything Japanese that has tentacles is bad, bad news for schoolgirls the world over.
Ride the skies
I completely agree.
Now, having said that, the size of fish (cod definitely, and I would assume tuna as well) has declined due to industrial fishing practices wiping out the larger subspecies entirely and then moving down the chain.
I can't see any objection to reviving a subspecies that would have existed had sane fishing practices existed - say, by using the same technique as for gene therapy and splicing in genes from extinct varieties - provided it is done with caution.
It wouldn't matter too much if such a revived subspecies escaped, as the environment has evolved on the basis that it is present. Creatures further up the food chain might start reviving, for example.
It might also start to deal with "dead zones" (oxygen-free regions in the seas and oceans), which are largely a product of overfishing resulting in excessive algae, the lives, deaths and decaying of which simply eliminates all the oxygen present. Reintroducing a stable, self-sustaining food chain to the oceans would be dangerous but still much safer than the current disaster.
The problem is, this is NOT what is being done. Instead of recreating a subspecies that should have existed but was obliterated due to the stupidity of the seafood industry, they are creating a whole new subspecies according to market tastes. And when the market shifts (as it routinely does), the old stocks will be worthless and dumped into the wild in an uncontrolled way that has nothing to do with restoring the ecology and everything to do with maximizing profit.
They are also not going to make any effort to develop anything further up or down the foodchain, which means you'll have something that throws off whatever balance does exist in the current environment.
Anyone here remember the old ecology computer games, like "foxes and rabbits", where you specify the initial number of each and the available area of grass for the rabbits to feed on? Of those who do, how many of you succeeded in producing stable environments? It turns out that it's damn hard when the number of elements is very small, it's only viable when you've an extremely high level of biodiversity.
Here we have the three elements of the original game, with the food for the tuna replacing the grass, the tuna being the rabbits and the human consumers being the foxes. If, after all this time, you still can't find good starting numbers, what makes you think the fish markets (who don't give a rat's arse about the environment) are going to do any better?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Before you get too self-righteous, it's not necessarily quite that simple. First off, scarcity of food may possibly cause people (consciously or unconsciously) to have fewer children. I don't know the science on that one, but it's possible.
Second, it doesn't mean fewer people starving to death so much as it means more people (perhaps temporarily) not-starving to death-- and there's a difference. The whole point of an argument like the one the GP is making is, if you increase the food supply, the population increases to the point where people start starving to death again. If population growth is otherwise unchecked (e.g. by predators), then a population's numbers will grow until the available resources are not sufficient to support further growth. The two possibilities once that happens is (a) there will be some kind of equilibrium reached; or (b) the population will overuse the existing resources to the point where they basically exterminate themselves.
Which path do we want to take?
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna
Heroes in my sandwich
Tuna Power!
I see potential danger. Tuna are already a highly refined predator. What if the cages break and a group escape? Then you have a disease resistant fast growing population of predators loose in the seas. What could this mean for other species? Could this throw the ecological balance way out of whack?
I've worked in population modelling in the past, and predator/prey ecology is complicated, chaotic and inherently unpredictable. Forget Lotke-Volterra models, although they are nice equations, they are not realistic in real world situations where there are many species with many interactions. Super-Tuna would be another apex-predator, as nothing else can catch them except humans because they swim so fast. Messing with apex predators ALWAYS does weird stuff to ecology, and it's never good.
Actually, what has been shown is that the more power and education women have in a society, the fewer children. It seems that when given the choice, women only really want to have on average about 2 kids. If we are concerned about population growth then we should be working towards making women everywhere free and educated.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
Are you advocating that people try to grow fish in their gardens?
Undoubtedly the first message from the Super Tuna Council will be:
ALL YOUR BAYS ARE BELONG TO US.