UC San Diego Library – Scripps Digital Collection

In "A Systematic Study of the Pacific Tunas" it was shown that specimens of yellowfin tuna, (Neothunnus macropterus), and albacore (Thunnus germo), obtained from Japan and the Hawaiian Islands are individually indistinguishable from those taken in the eastern Pacific. In the present study the relationship of the foreign to the local specimens is more closely investigated. In the two sections of this report an effort is made to determine, firstly, whether fish (of the two species discussed) from Japan and from the Hawaiian Islands are of the same or different populations from those taken by the California fishing fleet off this coast; and secondly, whether the yellowfin tuna in the eastern Pacific constitute a single, homogeneous and intermingling population or an aggregate of separate and recognizable groups, each confined to a specific geographic area.