Return of Tuna Offers a Boost to Yorkshire’s Angling Community
Yorkshire is home to thousands of recreational and professional anglers, with the rivers, lakes, and sea nearby all offering a bounty of fish to try to catch. Most recently, an old favourite made its way back to these waters in force.
Owing to conservation efforts, the Atlantic bluefin tuna has re-colonised the Yorkshire coast, with the occasion marked by the first catches of the fish in around 60 years. The return of the tuna comes at a time when fishing is enjoying a renewed uptick in interest and participation across the UK.
Fishing Flying up the Charts
Across pop culture, fishing is having a moment. Entertainment is seeing more and more productions not only feature angling, but also become popular as a result. The Big Bass Bonanza game series is the prime showcase of this trend. It kicked off the popularity of the fishing feature, where players can catch cash-carrying fish, and has since been expanded into over 20 different games to meet demand. Around the Big Bass games, there are also several other slots that either leverage the fishing feature or go all-in on fishing as a theme in their own way.
On TV, fishing is also riding a wave of interest in a couple of different ways. Most recently, the show Below on Netflix surged up the charts. It surpassed East of Eden for the top spot on the massive global streaming platform, with the story being based around a fishing village in Newfoundland and an ancient underwater menace.
Away from dramatisations, we’ve also seen Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing sustain a tremendous amount of fandom. Series 9 is said to be on the way, and it’ll undoubtedly prove to be among the BBC’s biggest shows again.
Casting Out for Some Tuna
At the end of the summer, researchers at the University of Exeter cast off from the coast of Whitby to survey the tuna community that had come to these shores. As Oceanographic Magazine has detailed, the team successfully tagged five Atlantic bluefin tuna to help them to monitor their migration patterns and assist in their conservation. It was in the 1960s that the fish had been driven out of the North Sea, but their presence back on the Yorkshire coast has affirmed the successes of their conservation.
Back as far as the 1930s, Whitby and Scarborough were the hotspots for avid anglers and even the rich and famous for catching tuna. The likes of John Wayne, Errol Flynn, and Clark Gable all came to the area to take on the big-game fishing challenges presented by the stock of giant bluefin tuna. Now, for the first time in around 60 years, people are catching these colossal fish from Whitby once again. They will prove to be a major draw for tourists as well as local anglers, perhaps making this the beginning of a “tunny” fishing renaissance.
The tuna have returned to the Yorkshire coastline, potentially marking the start of a new age for sport fishing in the local area.
