The challenge of domesticating bluefin tuna (Project SELFDOTT)

Folleto divulgativo del proyecto SELFDOTTSELFDOTT GA 212797 7FP E

Domestication of Bluefin tuna, the last great challenge of marine aquaculture

The bluefin tuna Thunnus thynnus (L., 1758) is a teleost fish belonging to the Scombridae family and is an emblematic species that has fed the Mediterranean populations for millennia. From the 90´s starts the process called «bluefin tuna fattening» which involves capturing live specimens by purse seiners in spawning areas, transferring them to nearby farms to the coast, feeding them for several months with small pelagic fish rich in fat and sent to market later, especially Japan. This activity led to severe exploitation of natural populations, risking the future of the fishery. To mitigate this, the International Council for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) established from 2007 a recovery plan, with a drastic limitation of catches and several conservation measures, which have made the fishery of Atlantic bluefin tuna one of the most regulated. Clearly, despite the undoubted positive effects on the recovery of the stock, limited catches will continue in the near future. Therefore, to ensure the supply of this iconic species in the quantity and quality required by an increasingly important and selective market, the bluefin tuna production has to come inevitably by techniques of integrated aquaculture completely independent of natural populations, such as it happens today with species such as gilthead sea bream, sea bass or turbot. This activity also promotes the recovery of natural stocks by reducing the fisheries pressure. The Oceanographic Centre of Murcia, belonging to Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO, has been developing for more than 10 years, techniques for the captive breeding of bluefin tuna and production of juveniles who have been subsequently raised to market size in floating cages companies the sector, within the framework of research projects with the IEO

Cultivating Habits of Faith: The Power of Latina Stories and Practices to Educate U.S. Catholics in the Faith

Thesis advisor: Hosffman OspinoThe Catholic Church’s formal documents throughout the centuries have celebrated and affirmed the role of parents educating their children on faith matters in the context of the home. Nevertheless, the Church offers parents very little practical guidance as to how they can make their home a domestic church or what they can do to organically and consistently incorporate the faith into daily life. As the Church analyzes why presently 6 Catholics are disaffiliating for every new member that joins, it must reconsider the lack of attention the home has received as an authoritative space for religious transmission. The home, as a sacramental space, has the potential to call attention to the divinity that surrounds us and invites us to action and awakening. It is also the haven where we nurture our most important and loving relationships that initiate us into the faith. The home is also a space for negotiation, that is, where we learn to wrestle with mystery and ambiguity. Critical dialogues within the home are imperative to engaging the present world from a Catholic perspective. This dissertation conducted an ethnographic study of a group of Miami-based Cuban American Catholic women across two generations. The women were chosen based on their active involvement within the Catholic Church. The study found that 100% of the women were successful in transmitting their Catholic faith to their daughters due to four socialization practices. Faith modeling by extended kin, engagement in social justice vocations across the community, explicitly affirming the personalization of daily rituals such as prayer, and finally, ongoing intergenerational dialogues were found in the stories of all the women participants. Religious imagination is the glue that holds all of the moving pieces (home, women and socializing praxis) in this dissertation. I provide herein a midrash of Matthew 27:57-61 to illustrate how the physical and relational components of the Cuban-American home serve to negotiate a hermeneutic that is matriarchal, bottom-up, and interdisciplinary. The hermeneutic echoes the message of the women studied herein; namely, that a community working together in the midst of dislocation is already being liberated. Noting the psycho-social importance of a cohesive narrative identity and its impact on authentic faith transmission calls into question whether the pedestrian nature of the home has led to mistaken notions of this pedagogy being too simplistic. Nevertheless, in telling stories and (de/re)constructing life narratives, individuals are placed within the larger scheme of history, redemptive sequences are analyzed and building resilience, and the stories themselves become a safe space from which to discern larger questions. This dissertation proposes communal, home-based activities as an effective method for faith transmission as it fosters the necessary intimacy to share relevant and passionate stories that powerfully answer why being Catholic truly matters now and to our next generation.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry

Recruits from farmed ABFT in Murcia ?

It has been demonstrated at least in the Murcia area, that the captive ABFT (Thunnus thynnus) for fattening activities reproduce actively in the farming cages in the natural spawning season (early June – middle July). Tens of millions of fertilized eggs coming from these cages had been collected in the last years and cultured in the facilities of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) in Mazarrón (Murcia, SE Spain) and grown up to juveniles, demonstrating as well their viability. Taking into account that an ABFT female could spawn roughly hundred thousands of eggs per kg during all the spawning season and thousands of tones of ABFT adults have been farmed in the Murcia coast during the last years, the total fertilized eggs could reach hundreds of billions every year. Obviously the conditions in the Murcia coast are different of the natural spawning areas not only regarding the feeding availability but also the massive presence of many egg and larvae predators. It would be recommendable to carry out prospecting surveys in the aim to shed some light on this possible effect of farmed ABFT on the recruitment at least in Murcia

Eight years of research on bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) culture at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO)

Since 2000 the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) is participating in several research projects on BFT culture with the aim of contributing of the Domestication of this species, for improving the productive process and reducing the pressure on the wild stock as it has already happened with other full cycle cultured species

Spain's Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Aquaculture

In this chapter, we outline the advantes in Spain's ABT aquaculture between 2011 and 2015 and conclude with the details of the new land-based facility designed to take us into the future.Versión del edito

La construcción de problemas en el laboratorio durante la formación del profesorado : una experiencia didáctica

En este trabajo presentamos los resultados de una experiencia didáctica que integra la construcción y resolución de problemas durante la formación del profesorado de educación primaria en el área de didáctica de las ciencias experimentales. Partiendo de un contexto inicial de total autonomía, que permite al alumno tomar la iniciativa y reflexionar sobre sus limitaciones, el profesor conduce a los estudiantes dentro de un modelo de indagación dirigida hacia un contexto donde se puedan construir y resolver problemas relacionados con fenómenos de la vida cotidiana. La aplicación de este modelo en el laboratorio de ciencias a lo largo de seis cursos académicos muestra las posibilidades didácticas del mismo, pero también pone de manifi esto las difi cultades conceptuales, procedimentales y actitudinales de los estudiantes cuando se enfrentan a un modelo de enseñanza y aprendizaje «no tradicional».In this paper, we show the results of a didactic experience that integrates building and solving problems within the experimental sciences contents included in the teachers training curriculum. From an initial context based on the full autonomy of students, which allows them to take the initiative and to think about their limitations, the teacher leads the students towards an inquiry classroom context, where problems can be built and solved. Based on our experience over six academic years, didactic applications of our model are shown. Nevertheless, this experience also shows the difficulties about concepts, procedures and attitudes that appear when students meet a «non-traditional» teaching and learning model

Large scale RTD facility to take tuna farming forward

The Atlantic Bluefin tuna is an emblematic species which is feeding the Mediterranean human populations for centuries. In the last two decades its wild stocks have been severely overfished having been established important capture limits with the consequent reduction of the production. For satisfying the high market, it is essential the increase the bluefin tuna production coming from the self-sustained aquaculture. The Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) has recently built a land-based large scale facility (ICRA) for the control of the reproduction of this species, capable of hosting big size breeders. This facility is near the already existing IEO Aquaculture facility in Mazarrón, (Murcia, SE Spain), devoted to the research on Atlantic Bluefin tuna larval rearing and juveniles production. Both facilities are a model of how research centres of excellence can enhance cooperation to generate new knowledge on performance that can be transferred directly to operators and provide the technical basis needed to take the sector forward.Co-funded by European Regional Development Funds (FEDER) and Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO