Mystery of how a £1million tuna fish native to Mexico ended up in Cornwall

A rare and valuable 300lb tuna found on a Cornish beach will be cut up to see where it came from.

The 8ft bluefin, one of only 26 seen off Cornwall since the 1800s, has been dissected by Exeter University.

The EU bans the sale of the fish, native to the Med and Mexico, but one sold in Japan last year for £1million.

A group of friends stumbled across the 2.4m Bluefin tuna when they were kayaking at Kingsand, Cornwall in the summer.



The five pals - Sarah Little, 22, Laura Pickervance, 23, Shauna Creamer, 23, Charlotte Chambers, 24, and Hannah Ford, 24 - were not allowed to sell it under EU laws which forbid trade in the critically-endangered species.

Instead, they donated the monster catch to Exeter University's Penryn campus in Cornwall where scientists carried out a post-mortem.

A spokesman for the University of Exeter said: "The dissection was a rare opportunity and was filmed for anatomy student lectures.

"The researchers took samples for genetic testing that will show whether it swam here from breeding grounds in the Med or from Mexico."

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