Anglers from across Australia are travelling to Lakes Entrance, a small tourist town in Victoria's east about 300 kilometres from Melbourne, to fish for giant tuna, some of them weighing more than 200 kilograms.
The largest so far, at 231 kilograms, was caught on Sunday by five fishers calling themselves the A Team. The Gippsland Lakes Fishing Club said the catch was a club record.
Ricky Grech, who owns Lakes Charter Fishing, was among the first to land one of the giant tuna last month, at 154 kilograms. Catches since have varied from 140 to 190 kilograms, with individual fish of 204 and 217 kilograms also recorded.
“It's something that I don't think we've really seen so big and phenomenal in Lakes Entrance,” Mr Grech said.
The influx has filled car parks with boat trailers and put accommodation in demand, with visitors arriving from Sydney, Queensland, Adelaide and Western Australia. “It was unbelievable. [People were] going out for dinner, pizza shops getting booked … Airbnbs and tackle shops being called,” Mr Grech said.
He also relayed the official assessment of the crowd. “I spoke to one of the fisheries officers and he says it's busier than Easter,” he said.
Dr Taylor Hunt, manager of recreational fisheries at the Victorian Fisheries Authority, described the town as a hub for anglers chasing the fish. “It's a buzz for the fishing community,” he said. “It's hard to get a car park; there are so many boat trailers there.”
What the fish actually are has not been settled. This month the CSIRO confirmed that two tuna caught off Western Port Bay in July were Pacific bluefin, the first genetically confirmed fish of the species in Victorian waters. “I'm extremely confident in these results following a secondary forensic-grade sequencing analysis further confirming our initial quick species ID test,” said the CSIRO principal research scientist Dr Peter Grewe.
Researchers are now working to establish whether the much larger fish off Lakes Entrance are Pacific bluefin as well. Dr Grewe said the episode showed the value of information shared by recreational fishers: “Information from people out on the water every day is invaluable to scientists.”
The fisheries officer's remark is the measurement that matters here, and it deserves to be entered into the record properly. The town is busier than Easter.
The Questionable Times notes that Easter is a fixed point in the Australian tourism calendar, set years in advance by astronomy and arithmetic, and that it is the benchmark against which a coastal town's busiest weekend is judged.
On that benchmark the tuna have outperformed a public holiday. Car parks are full, accommodation is taken, the pizza shops are booked and the tackle shops are ringing, which is the complete signature of a long weekend occurring without one.
Our analysts therefore record the event in the only unit the fisheries service has supplied. One run of tuna is worth slightly more than one Easter.
The Department of Unnecessary Research observes that this leaves the tourism calendar with a new kind of entry. Easter is movable but calculable. The tuna are neither.
One detail remains outstanding. The club record now stands at 231 kilograms, held by a fish whose species has not yet been established, which makes it the largest recorded example of something.