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Synergy

Artist: John Lendis
Scientist: Naomi Clear

John Lendis

The painting emphasises movement and pattern, surface and depth, relating in some ways both to the habits of the southern bluefin tuna (SBT) and the process of recording and tracking. It has the feel of a memorial; I was alarmed to learn of the sharp decline in numbers and of the increasing pressures on the SBT stock highlighted by scientific research. The gold numbers represent the tagged fishes, and the red ocean a reference to their inevitable fate.

I hope that this painting also hints at the beauty of these creatures and suggests the mystery and beauty of their environment.

Naomi Clear

John Lendis has created a vivid representation of the 3-dimensional space of the pelagic environment in which southern bluefin tuna spend their lives. These fish can dive hundreds of metres down into dark cool waters but also migrate thousands of kilometres across the world’s oceans. To me, the blood red captures the powerful life force of tunas; their special adaptations make them extremely efficient swimmers and enable them to travel in speed bursts of 70 km/hr. Scientific research on southern bluefin tuna includes tagging programs during which thousands of juvenile fish are tagged when they appear in surface schools in the Great Australian Bight. In John’s painting, the density of the yellow tags gives us an impression of this schooling behaviour of young tunas. The tags are returned to us from around the world when the fish are re-caught. By tagging such large numbers of fish we can estimate fishing and natural mortality and growth rates, and these data are used in the stock assessment models to estimate the total global population of SBT.