I was shocked as a kid seeing tuna in an aquarium up close and realizing how big they were. The aquarium kept them in the same tank as the sharks and honestly, I was more intimidated by them than the sharks.
jaapz 4 hours ago [-]
There are species of tuna that can reach up to 4.5m. But most canned tuna is Skipjack or Albacore and they can "only" get up to 0.8m (skipjack) and 1m (albacore).
Still pretty big though. But the huge ones are mostly sold at auction for sushi afaik
stevenwoo 4 hours ago [-]
I had to look it up - only a couple of aquariums in the world have bluefin (the largest species) in captivity, most that keep tuna have yellowfin and skipjack, large fish but not nearly as big as bluefin.
EvanAnderson 2 hours ago [-]
Similar experience albeit with a documentary. I was shocked at how big and imposing they were.
riedel 7 hours ago [-]
I think I never saw life tuna, but I still remember the scenes from 'The Outsiders of Uskoken Castle' as a kid
(the book/TV series is also known as 'Red Zora')
It's strange that we eat predator animals. Tunas are predators, in contrast cows, pigs or chickens.
lexicality 4 hours ago [-]
Most fish are predators because there isn't much underwater vegetation to graze on...
cubefox 3 hours ago [-]
There is a lot of phytoplankton, plant-like algae. Though apparently most fish don't eat it directly. Zooplankton (which consumes phytoplankton) seems to be a more common food source for fish. You could call a fish eating zooplankton a "predator" because zooplankton are non-plant microorganisms, but that stretches the definition.
Anyway, tuna don't just eat zooplankton, they eat smaller fish. And most fish are definitely not predators of this kind, because that would be mathematically impossible.
tempfile 4 hours ago [-]
If you are counting individual fish (independent of size) and you count all sea creatures, I think this is false. The "vegetation" are small creatures like phytoplankton, and the fish that eat them probably vastly outnumber the fish that eat fish. Each stage of the food change contains about an order of magnitude less fish than the level below.
adrian_b 2 hours ago [-]
Most small fish eat small crustaceans and other small animals, not algae.
Most phytoplankton, i.e. unicellular algae, is eaten by zooplankton, i.e. mostly by small crustaceans, like copepods.
The fish that eat other animals vastly outnumber the fish that eat algae or aquatic plants.
In open water environments, the kinds of bigger animals, i.e. fish, cephalopods, chaetognaths, cnidarians, ctenophores are almost all predators who, unless they eat each other, they are eating zooplankton that consists mostly of small crustaceans and of planktonic larvae of the animals that live on the bottom.
cubefox 1 hours ago [-]
For reference, the copepod, the main ingredient of zooplankton, has a typical size of 1 mm to 2 mm.
war-is-peace 6 hours ago [-]
hungry now
MotoriX 23 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 13:12:27 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Still pretty big though. But the huge ones are mostly sold at auction for sushi afaik
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2512066123
Anyway, tuna don't just eat zooplankton, they eat smaller fish. And most fish are definitely not predators of this kind, because that would be mathematically impossible.
Most phytoplankton, i.e. unicellular algae, is eaten by zooplankton, i.e. mostly by small crustaceans, like copepods.
The fish that eat other animals vastly outnumber the fish that eat algae or aquatic plants.
In open water environments, the kinds of bigger animals, i.e. fish, cephalopods, chaetognaths, cnidarians, ctenophores are almost all predators who, unless they eat each other, they are eating zooplankton that consists mostly of small crustaceans and of planktonic larvae of the animals that live on the bottom.