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."

Comments

Obligatory.....

[segedunum]

Have they bred them with frickin' laser beams though?

Re:Obligatory.....

[CRCulver]

The joke has already been made for years on Slashdot. It's unnecessary to continue posting it. In fact, you might even say that it is redundant.

Obligatory

[Captain Splendid]

Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna

Sashimi

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Sashimi

[lorenlal]

maybe, but what happens if the super tuna out competes and eats all non-super tuna?

Darwin wins. See, tuna made themselves to tasty that:
1) They'd be overfished.
2) We'd see that, and then make them EVEN BETTER and plentiful.

Well done tuna. You've won the genetic lottery.

Re:Sashimi

[4181]

Perhaps developing tasty humans would address food and population issues simultaneously.

Cue that eco-maniacs

[LingNoi]

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..

Re:Cue that eco-maniacs

[Lunoria]

"Natural" tuna have had their genes altered through hundreds of years of breading.

Tuna comes pre-breaded now? Talk about a time saver!

Re:Cue that eco-maniacs

[EraserMouseMan]

We should hunt them to near-extinction. Then they'll get put on the extinction list and all tuna fishing will be banned. Then my roommate will have to find a different terrible-smelling food to eat. . . in mass quantities . . . EVERY evening!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TUNAZILLA!

[wcrowe]

'nuf said...

Monsanto of the Sea?

[Sponge Bath]

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?

Re:Monsanto of the Sea?

[tpjunkie]

Shouldn't be too much of a problem. Unlike most fish, which are simply capable of ramjet respiration, (where water is forced over and through the fish's gills at high speed through swimming, as opposed to forcing the water over their gills via the mouth and operculum), with tuna this is obligatory, as otherwise the fish cannot obtain enough O2 from the water, and will for lack of a better word, drown. They swim constantly, even while "sleeping"

Sorry Charlie...

[Em Emalb]

It's a tunami!

Re:Fish Overlords

[vishbar]

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.

Re:very dangerous practice

[nine-times]

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?

Re:Obligatory

[Lord Fury]

Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna

Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna

Teenage Kanji Ninja Tuna

Heroes in my sandwich

Tuna Power!

Re:very dangerous practice

[WeirdJohn]

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.

Re:We 3 Tuna

[Critical Facilities]

Are you advocating that people try to grow fish in their gardens?

Re:We 3 Tuna

[An ominous Cow art]

Undoubtedly the first message from the Super Tuna Council will be:

ALL YOUR BAYS ARE BELONG TO US.