“The One that Got Away” - How/When/Why Scarborough’s fishing industry was hooked by “the big fish in the small port” but was left “gutted”.

By Mick Prince

The interest in African big game hunting can be dated to 1848, when Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming returned to Britain having spent five years hunting in Africa with 30 tons of curios and animal trophies [1]. Two years later he allowed the public to view his collection, charging them a shilling to do so. It is clear from his diaries, photo albums and taxidermy that Harrison was amongst those emulating this pattern – travelling the world, and bringing back the ‘best’ examples of the hunt. However, there was a form of big game hunting which was taking place in the UK up until the middle of the 20th century, though rather than the lions and elephants of Africa, this game was much closer to home, and could be found in the shores near Scarborough.

From photographs and articles of the time it is possible to see that the port of Scarborough was the 5th largest in the UK for herring seasonal catch and women from as far as the Shetlands followed the fishing fleets south to Scarborough and beyond to Norfolk with travel expenses paid by fish curers. Some made the journey not only for work, but also as an opportunity to see life beyond the Shetland Isles. The herring are significant to the development of the big game hunting in the area since they were a major food source for the tuna.

Atlantic bluefin tuna, which were the ones in question, are the largest tuna species capable of reaching a length of 4 m (13 feet) and capable of weighing in at 907kg (2,000 pounds) [2]. These fish are capable of living to 35 years at least, and are apex predators, feeding on herring and mackerel as adults. This explains why local fishermen, who had been aware of the tuna in the North Sea since the late 1700s, considered them bad for business as they were feeding on the herring and causing damage to the fishing nets.

It was not until later that wealthy adventurers and celebrities such as Baron de Rothchild saw the opportunity for sport off the Scarborough coast.  From the 1920s to the 1950s, Scarborough was the focus for fishermen keen to catch the glittering prize of an Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna (“Thunnus Thynnus” - known locally as the Tunny). These fish are capable of swimming at speeds of up to 45mph and tow a small boat rod/line fisherman for miles once hooked. Presumably, the exhausted tuna would be towed behind the boat to port rather than risk hauling it into the boat and therefore still alive when it was eventually lifted ashore. Millionaires such as Lady Anna Yule, said to be the richest heiress in the empire, and film stars including Charles Laughton rubbed shoulders in the town’s hotels. In the British Tunny Club (a gentleman’s club established by Sir Edward Peel a marine biologist) on Sandside, photographs suggest that stars as big as John Wayne and Errol Flynn took part in the hunt, though there is little in the way of hard evidence to support this [3].

A special train was chartered from London to bring celebrities such as Lady Broughton, who was renowned for big-game hunting in Africa, to Scarborough to take part in the hunt. Lady Broughton herself took part in the Women’s World Tuna Challenge Cup. Anglers used a long rod (2m / 6’6”) made of hickory, bamboo, lancewood and greenheart and baited with herring or mackerel on 5in (12cms) hooks with the season lasting less than 3 months during the Autumn.  The record for the largest tuna caught in British waters was held by Lorenzo Mitchell-Henry, aged 67, in 1933. Mitchell-Henry caught the fish 50 miles off the Scarborough coast, using a rod and line from a small, open 10m (30ft) coble boat, fitted with a seat and harness and towed by a larger vessel. When it was landed at Scarborough the tuna weighed 356kgs (851lbs). The Woodend Tuna, held at Scarborough Museums and Galleries, is a replica of this catch.

Tunny for Money

In the early 1920’s, the Tunny Charity Fund was formed by the Tunny Club restaurant owner and managed together with the Mayor to raise money for local charities by showing specimen tuna taxidermy, along with other local species. This went on for around twenty years, raising over £16000, until the tuna disappeared from local waters, and the charity closed in 1973.   The fish were not considered appealing to human tastes in the UK, despite being popular in the Mediterranean, and were generally sold cheaply for pig feed and land fertiliser. In Japan, the meat is currently highly valued at up to US$50,000 per fish.

Decline of tuna

After a bountiful sporting couple of decades, the North Sea Tuna catch reduced although they were still been seen locally as recently as 1970s.  The science of the decline of tuna stocks in the North Sea casts doubt on the idea of over fishing of herring being the cause. New evidence has suggested that the tuna may have been present in the North Sea due to a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). This is a naturally occurring cycle which sees sea temperatures warm and then cool over a cyclical period of sixty to a hundred years. It may be the case that when the North Sea tuna fishery was thriving there was a positive AMO in the North Sea which warmed the waters and attracted tuna to the region. From the 1950s onwards the AMO may have turned negative, leading to cooler seas and leading to the absence of tuna in UK waters. Recent years have seen Bluefin tuna return to British waters, possibly due to a change in the AMO. The Times newspaper has reported that there were over five hundred sightings of tuna in British waters from 2013 to 2018, with a number of tuna reaching the same sizes as those caught in the golden years of the North Sea big game fishing era. These tuna have been found all around the UK and have included a 770lbs tuna caught by a commercial fishing vessel off the coast of Devon, a 500lb tuna caught by a boat angler off the Welsh coast and a 600lb tuna found trapped in a fish pen in a Scottish fish farm.

A two-year project named Thunnus UK, a collaboration between Exeter University, Cefas and Stanford University in the US, has been launched to study and understand the increasing number of bluefin tuna in British waters. The prospect of a recreational catch-and-release tuna fishery, like the one which existed in the 1920s and 1930s, being re-established in British waters, therefore, remains a possibility, but there will be much more debate and discussion before anglers will once again be able to catch bluefin tuna in British waters.

About the author

Mick Prince - is a Scarborough based citizen researcher and active community volunteer within a number of organisations.

Acknowledgments - Grateful thanks to the following for their support in writing and researching this piece

British Sea Fishing

Scarborough Central Library

Scarborough Maritime Heritage Museum

REFERENCES:

1. Thompsell, A. Real Men/Savage Nature: The Rise of African Big Game Hunting, 1870–1914

2. Oceana, Protecting the world’s oceans - Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

3. Black Moon Sport Fishing, (2019) History of UK Tunny Fishing