The 700-pound giant Atlantic bluefin tuna carrying satellite radio tag number 5108024 entered the Gulf of Mexico on March 23, 2009, hugging the coast of Cuba, and speeding along a straight line to the warm water body's center.
The huge fish meandered north toward what would become its spawning and feeding territory over the next two months, the deep Gulf slope between Louisiana and western Florida. Finally, it left the Gulf for colder water in the Atlantic on May 24. Its tag was jettisoned for pickup by scientists a few days later.
More than once, the fish's squiggly path took it right across the mouth of the Mississippi River, alongside the drilling ship developing BP's Deepwater Horizon well.
If the fish had been tagged this year, the tag would likely have shown the tuna following the same path, where it and its eggs would have been swimming or floating in the oil being released from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, said Barbara Block, a Stanford University marine biologist who has participated in the tagging of more than 1,000 bluefins during the past 10 years.
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