Soaring back

Walk along the UK's coast this summer and you might encounter ocean giants the size of wardrobes erupting from the waters. Kevin Parr reports on the remarkable return of bluefin tuna to our shores

- Kevin Parr

Several years ago, I received a curious photo from a bass-fishing friend - let's call him Andy. It was a bit blurred and, as I squinted to make sense of it, a second image flashed up. There was Andy, leaning over the edge of his boat and unhooking something so huge it couldn't fit in the frame. I had questions, but had to wait until the evening when Andy was safely back on dry land to hear the answers.

He had motored out to a favourite bass mark off the south Cornish coast, he explained, then waited for the gulls to lead him to fish. Seabirds are drawn to a mass of small fish, such as whitebait, which are corralled into balls by larger mackerel and garfish. They in turn will be predated by bass and a lure cast into the foaming morass of fish can often prove successful.

As Andy fished, so the splashes around him became ever more explosive. Just as he realised what was creating them, the rod thumped over and line began to stream from the reel. He was using a stronger set-up than normal; his usual choice of line would have snapped under the strain, but this one held - and the fish began to drag the boat sideways. Andy reckoned that he was towed for half a mile before the fish slowed down.

Then began an epic, Ernest Hemingway-esque two-hour tug of war. Somehow, the tackle held and he got the fish - a bluefin tuna - to the side of his boat, where he popped out the hook and watched it drift back down into the depths. “How big was it?” I asked. “Bigger than me,” Andy replied.

At the time, it would have been one of the first bluefin tuna taken on rod and line in British waters for many decades, but Andy felt compelled to keep it quiet. Aside from unwanted attention for him and the fish, there was a legal question. At the time, the Atlantic bluefin tuna (