Importance of the piscivory for Pacific bluefin tuna larvae revealed by the mass rearing technique

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The shift of feeding habits from zooplankton to fish larvae occurs in their early life stage of Pacific bluefin tuna. We conducted the rearing experiments in order to elucidate the importance of the piscivory for growth and survival of Pacific bluefin tuna larvae. A series of the experiments revealed that the piscivory played an important role for the growth and survival of the reared tuna larvae and the growth and survival of tuna larvae largely depended on their feeding condition of the prey fish larvae. These results contribute to not only the understanding of the inter-annual variations in recruitment success but also the developments of mass-culture technique for aquaculture of the present species.