Bluefin tuna is caught in North Sea for the first time in 90 years
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This is one fish that will definitely make a splash.
The first bluefin tuna to be caught in the North Sea for almost 90 years has been celebrated by fishermen and conservationists alike.
The huge creature, which weighed 746lb (338kg), was landed on Monday at Whitby, the port on the North Yorkshire coast that was a centre of big game fishing in the 1950s.
Hollywood stars such as Clark Gable and David Niven were drawn to the area for the chance to catch the enormous 'tunny' fish.
Whitby holds the British record for a bluefin caught on rod and line – a 851lb monster in 1933.
But due to overfishing of herring stocks the big game species disappeared from the North Sea in the 1960s.
Over the last ten years they have returned in huge numbers to waters of the South West where there is now a thriving and sustainable fishery for them.
The seas off Devon and Cornwall are teeming with tunny but now they appear to have returned in great number to the North Sea too.
A bluefin tuna at Whitby fish market on Monday, the second in two days and among the first landed in 90 years
Caught in Whitby in 1933, the largest Atlantic bluefin tuna ever caught weighed 851lbs (386kg)
Under Defra rules, fishing vessels are granted an annual licence to catch and land a small quota of bluefin tuna which they can sell to markets for thousands of pounds.
The crew of Whitby vessel Dominator caught the whopping specimen, thought to be the first bluefin tuna landed in the area since 1939.
Local Glenn Kilpatrick said: 'I watched Dominator return, sitting noticeably heavy to one side with the weight of the catch aboard.'
Dr Lucy Hawkes, of the University of Exeter, which monitors the return of bluefin tuna to the North Sea, said: 'Bluefin tuna are also top predators who can only be in these waters if the ecosystems underneath them are healthy.'
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