The Yellowfin Tuna Thunnus albacares as a vagrant in the Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

The true tunas (Scombridae, Scombrinae, Thunnus spp.) are oceanodromous species with wide geographical distributions. Only two of the eight species currently recognised as belonging to this genus are known to occur in the Mediterranean Sea: the Albacore T. Alalunga (Bonnaterre 1788), which is cosmopolitan in tropical and temperate waters, and the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna T. thynnus (L. 1758), whose range includes the entire Atlantic Ocean besides the Mediterranean (Froese & Pauly, 2019). The Blackfin Tuna T. atlanticus (Lesson 1831) (native range: Western Atlantic), the Pacific Bluefin Tuna T. Orientalis (Temminck & Schlegel 1844) (native range: Pacific), the Southern Bluefin Tuna T. maccoyyi (Castelnau 1872) (native range: Atlantic, Indian and Pacific in the southern hemisphere only), and the Longtail Tuna T. tonggol (Bleeker 1851) (native range: Indo-west Pacific) do not occur anywhere near the Mediterranean. On the other hand, the Yellowfin Tuna T. albacares (Bonnaterre 1788) and the Bigeye Tuna T. obesus (Lowe 1839) have a worldwide distribution in tropical and subtropical seas, including in the Eastern Atlantic next to the Strait of Gibraltar, but are thought to be absent from the Mediterranean Sea (Collette & Nauen, 1983; Froese & Pauly, 2019). Here, we report on the capture of an adult Yellowfin Tuna made in the central Mediterranean.