"We saw lots of small bluefin," said Dr. Barbara Block, after unloading over a dozen 12 to 15-pound bluefin from the tanks of Norm Kagawa's Shogun.

"It looks like there's lots of fish coming over from Japan this year, and there's whales and feed. If they don't take too many of these six-kilo fish we'll have excellent recruitment for the next year class."

Barbara Block is one of the nation's premier fish biologists, who specializes in pelagic species like tuna and billfish. She runs the science program at Monterey Bay, adjacent to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where her counterpart, curator Chuck Farwell keeps the tuna displays that are open to the public.

Farwell was also aboard for the multi-day expedition, and he climbed down in the slammers in his wet suit to retrieve the tuna swimming in the tanks. The water level was lowered, and Farwell herded and trapped the swimmers into slings, so they could be removed, implanted with archival tags, and run up the dock to the semi parked in Fisherman's Landing parking lot.

The semi hauls the fish in a special trailer-tank.

"Ted Dunn designed that tank," Frank LoPreste told me as we stood next to it. Dunn is LoPreste's partner.

I watched as Barbara Block tended to the fish in the sling-cradles on deck.

"Are you injecting the fish with antibiotics?" I asked.

"No," she replied, "these are archival tags."

"They're so small!" I was amazed. "They're not much bigger than a needle. They've come a long way, sizing that stuff down."

She smiled in agreement.

After the fish came out of Shogun's tanks, they were handed to runners who hustled them in their slings up to the waiting truck, where they were added topside, by opening one side of the sling and freeing the tuna to swim in the schooling pattern with the other bluefin.

The bluefin seemed happy enough, circling in the tank, ready to begin their long journey north. The water inside has plenty of oxygen and is kept at 57 degrees. Soon the little bluefin will grow to 300 or 400 pounds, and you can see them when you go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, thanks to Farwell and Block. In a time of quickly diminishing resources, projects like this one are like a light coming on in a dark room. Here's to success.