A spectacle known as a “boiling sea” caused by bluefin tuna going into a feeding frenzy has been captured on film.<\/p>\n
The phenomenon happened due to large numbers of the Atlantic bluefin tuna hunting together, Alex Purdie from Alderney Wildlife Trust said.<\/p>\n
A video recorded on 8 September off Alderney showed the water churned into a white circle of breaking waves while hundreds of seabirds gathered above.<\/p>\n
“Witnessing a shoal of tuna feeding is an unforgettable experience – our own oceanic equivalent of a pride of lions hunting wildebeest,” Mr Purdie added.<\/p>\n
The marine biologist said the footage was captured by a drone flying at a safe distance of at least 50m (164ft).<\/p>\n
He explained that tuna had returned to Alderney’s waters in recent years, and the footage marked one of the first times such a frenzy had been filmed from above.<\/p>\n
Tuna feeding in these numbers was once a common sight before fishing decimated their populations and it was “remarkable to see our seas beginning to recover”, he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Purdie said the tuna rounded up the garfish they were hunting into large shoals, known as bait balls, and then charged into them. <\/p>\n
It forced the bait balls to the surface and prevented them from escaping, he added.<\/p>\n
“This, in turn, attracts thousands of seabirds, including gannets and herring gulls, which swoop down to feed on the fish from above,” Mr Purdie said.<\/p>\n
He added the display was also a reminder of the ecological value of apex predators as the phenomenon gave seabirds from Alderney an opportunity to get the fish to feed their chicks.<\/p>\n
They would otherwise have had to travel further afield.<\/p>\n
Mr Purdie said bluefin tuna numbers were rising across the UK after being virtually absent in the 1990s, thanks to a recovery plan set up by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A spectacle known as a “boiling sea” caused by bluefin tuna going into a feeding frenzy has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-181049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}