Jakarta (Indonesia Window) - Tuna is one of the largest seafood products in terms of volume with more than 4,490,000 million tons fished worldwide in 2011.
Of the volume, Indonesia accounts for 13 percent of the global tuna production of 591,000 million tons, according to the World Food Organization (FAO).
Therefore, the marine biota data, especially the presence and the cultivation of tuna in Indonesia, are one of the concerns of the TRIUMPH expedition carried out by the Deep Sea Research Center of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) together with China’s the First Institute of Oceanography, and the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Science of University of Maryland, United States.
The first stage of the expedition, which took place on November 18-December 24 2019, had passed through the waters of the Jakarta Bay, the Sunda Strait, the South Java Waters, and anchored in Tanjung Wangi, East Java, and showed that tuna was growing well in the southern regions of Java.
"Until now there has been no data in the areas where tuna is growing. In the meantime we can only see that in the southern part of Java, tuna is getting bigger,” the Acting Head of LIPI’s Deep Sea Research Center, Nugroho Dwi Hananto, said here recently.
He added that there are several areas in the southern waters of Java which become breeding grounds for tuna.
Meanwhile, the expedition aboard the research ship Baruna Jaya VIII owned by LIPI also observed the flow of plastic waste in the sea carried by currents from the Makassar Strait to southern Java.
"With the data obtained, then we will see in more detail about the plastic waste in the sea, and how it affects fish," he said.
Hananto explained that microplastics in these waters will be associated with plastic contents in the genital tract of fish.
"We must pay attention that fish larvae are not damaged, so we can optimize the fisheries working area in Indonesia," he added.
The Transport Indonesian Seas, Upwelling, Mixing Physics (TRIUMPH) expedition began on November 18 to December 25, 2019, covering the southern waters of Java, the Bali Strait to the Makassar Strait.
Reporting by Indonesia
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