The sheer scale is difficult to appreciate until you see the photographs. The fish is roughly human-sized in length but several times a person's mass, with a body so enormous that photos circulating around San Diego this week show people lying beside it for comparison. Now, instead of disappearing into some private freezer, much of the monster tuna is making its way into San Diego's local seafood community — including a very public breakdown Thursday evening at Little Italy's Herb & Wood.
The bigger fish was caught by Medak and his team aboard the Shearwater using rod and reel. Medak is hardly a newcomer to San Diego's offshore fishing scene: he is also associated with Point Loma Sportfishing's New Lo-An, which has reported more than 1,500 bluefin tuna landed during 2026 alone, and he represents commercial deep-set buoy gear fisheries on the Pacific Fishery Management Council's Highly Migratory Species Advisory Subpanel.
According to those involved with the catch, Medak's bluefin weighed 446 pounds dressed - meaning after its gills and internal organs had been removed - putting its estimated whole weight dangerously close to the 500-pound mark.Fisherman's Landing Tackle Shop described it as one of the largest bluefin ever caught in Southern California. Remarkably, it arrived only one day after another San Diego boat landed a monster of its own.
Captain Ryan Stahl and the Game Changer hooked a bluefin that measured approximately 89 inches long with a 63-inch girth. Western Outdoor News reported that the fish was estimated at 441 pounds based on its measurements and officially hit the certified dock scale at 420 pounds after being drained of blood. Stahl described watching the enormous tuna launch itself onto a trolled flying-fish presentation before making a blistering initial run that nearly emptied the heavy reel. That fish alone was being hailed as a catch capable of smashing California's previous modern bluefin marks. Then Medak's crew brought in an even bigger one the following day.
According to those involved with the catch, Medak's bluefin weighed 446 pounds dressed - meaning after its gills and internal organs had been removed - putting its estimated whole weight dangerously close to the 500-pound mark.Fisherman's Landing Tackle Shop described it as one of the largest bluefin ever caught in Southern California. Remarkably, it arrived only one day after another San Diego boat landed a monster of its own.
Captain Ryan Stahl and the Game Changer hooked a bluefin that measured approximately 89 inches long with a 63-inch girth. Western Outdoor News reported that the fish was estimated at 441 pounds based on its measurements and officially hit the certified dock scale at 420 pounds after being drained of blood. Stahl described watching the enormous tuna launch itself onto a trolled flying-fish presentation before making a blistering initial run that nearly emptied the heavy reel. That fish alone was being hailed as a catch capable of smashing California's previous modern bluefin marks. Then Medak's crew brought in an even bigger one the following day.
For perspective, a 310-pound bluefin caught about 65 miles off San Diego in 2017 generated headlines as a purported state record. A year later, a 363-pound bluefin landed aboard the American Angler was described as among the largest sport-caught bluefin ever taken in California waters. Now San Diego has seen fish exceeding 400 pounds on consecutive days.
The story isn't ending at the dock. The enormous Medak bluefin has made its way through local fishmonger Tommy Gomes and TunaVille Market & Grocery to Herb & Wood in Little Italy, where chef Brian Malarkey's restaurant is planning a public breakdown of the fish beginning at 6:30pm Thursday, September 10.
Herb & Wood is billing the event as "The BIGGEST Tuna Thursday," with the restaurant planning tuna specials throughout the week. According to the restaurant, the fish's history is even more extraordinary than its size: information associated with the tuna indicates it crossed the Pacific to Japan and returned before eventually being caught off the West Coast.
That kind of journey is entirely plausible for Pacific bluefin. Unlike fish that spend their entire lives along the California coast, Pacific bluefin spawn in the western Pacific near Japan. Some juveniles then undertake migrations spanning thousands of miles across the North Pacific to feed off Mexico and the United States before eventually returning west to spawn. NOAA describes Pacific bluefin as a single stock spanning the Pacific, with some individuals making precisely this trans-Pacific migration.
And part of this particular tuna will continue contributing to science after dinner is served. Herb & Wood says the fish's head is being provided to a scientist studying its otoliths - tiny calcified structures inside a fish's inner ear that can preserve information scientists use to determine age and reconstruct aspects of its life history and movement.
You don't need to land a 500-pound tuna yourself to taste fish coming directly from San Diego's waters. TunaVille Market & Grocery at Driscoll's Wharf in Point Loma specializes in locally harvested seafood and works directly with the region's fishing fleet, making it one of the most direct links between San Diego fishermen and San Diego dinner tables. Driscoll's Wharf itself sits in an area historically nicknamed "Tunaville," a reminder that Point Loma's relationship with tuna goes back generations.
The massive fish headed to Herb & Wood is an extreme example, but the larger dock-to-table movement represents something San Diego lost much of during the collapse of its industrial tuna fleet: the ability for residents to know who caught their seafood, where it came from and sometimes exactly when it came off the boat.
That's especially fitting this week because San Diego wasn't merely another fishing town. It was once the Tuna Capital of the World.
Long before biotechnology, craft beer and sprawling tourism campaigns became synonymous with San Diego, tuna helped build the city. San Diego's first fish cannery opened in 1909. Japanese fishermen played a crucial early role in developing the local fishery, and generations of Italian and Portuguese immigrants subsequently built fishing families and businesses around the waterfront. Those communities helped shape neighborhoods that remain integral to San Diego's identity today, particularly Little Italy and Point Loma.
At its height, the industry was staggering. The City of San Diego says that by the 1960s, tuna was the city's third-largest industry, employing nearly 40,000 people who caught, sold or processed fish. San Diego Bay was lined with canneries and tuna boats, and two of America's three largest tuna-canning companies operated here.
The San Diego History Center estimates that by 1939, the fleet's tuna catch exceeded 100 million pounds, while at one point an estimated 95% of the tuna canned in the United States was being processed in San Diego. Tuna wasn't simply something San Diegans ate - it provided livelihoods for fishermen, cannery workers, shipbuilders and entire immigrant communities.
The industry eventually unraveled amid a complicated combination of foreign competition, rising operating costs, changing fishing grounds, international disputes and environmental regulations surrounding dolphins and other marine mammals. By 1984, the major tuna corporations had left the West Coast, fundamentally transforming San Diego's working waterfront.
The fishing culture never entirely disappeared. And this week's catches are a pretty spectacular reminder of that.
It's tempting to look at a nearly 500-pound tuna off Southern California and immediately credit El Niño or climate change. The science is considerably more interesting - and less simple.
Pacific bluefin availability off California is strongly influenced by ocean conditions. NOAA-affiliated research examining the California Current found bluefin were more likely to occur in some recreational and commercial fisheries when sea-surface temperatures were approximately 17 to 21 degrees Celsius (63 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit). The relationship became particularly noticeable during the major marine heatwave known as "the Blob." Researchers specifically studied large-scale phenomena including El Niño because changing ocean temperatures, productivity and prey distribution can dramatically alter where fishermen encounter bluefin.
But warmer water does not simply equal bigger tuna. NOAA's broader assessment notes that Pacific bluefin tagged in the California Current move seasonally between Baja California and Northern California, with some traveling as far north as Washington. Scientists believe future warming could shift their preferred habitat northward, while changes in prey and ocean productivity may ultimately matter more than temperature alone.
There's another major reason San Diego fishermen are seeing healthy bluefin populations today that has nothing to do with an unusually warm patch of water: there are simply a lot more Pacific bluefin alive than there were a decade ago.
The species suffered a catastrophic decline after decades of overfishing. By roughly 2009-2012, spawning biomass had fallen to an estimated 2% of its unfished level. International restrictions beginning in 2011 dramatically reduced harvest pressure, particularly on juvenile fish.
It's tempting to look at a nearly 500-pound tuna off Southern California and immediately credit El Niño or climate change. The science is considerably more interesting - and less simple.
Pacific bluefin availability off California is strongly influenced by ocean conditions. NOAA-affiliated research examining the California Current found bluefin were more likely to occur in some recreational and commercial fisheries when sea-surface temperatures were approximately 17 to 21 degrees Celsius (63 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit). The relationship became particularly noticeable during the major marine heatwave known as "the Blob." Researchers specifically studied large-scale phenomena including El Niño because changing ocean temperatures, productivity and prey distribution can dramatically alter where fishermen encounter bluefin.
But warmer water does not simply equal bigger tuna. NOAA's broader assessment notes that Pacific bluefin tagged in the California Current move seasonally between Baja California and Northern California, with some traveling as far north as Washington. Scientists believe future warming could shift their preferred habitat northward, while changes in prey and ocean productivity may ultimately matter more than temperature alone.
There's another major reason San Diego fishermen are seeing healthy bluefin populations today that has nothing to do with an unusually warm patch of water: there are simply a lot more Pacific bluefin alive than there were a decade ago.
The species suffered a catastrophic decline after decades of overfishing. By roughly 2009-2012, spawning biomass had fallen to an estimated 2% of its unfished level. International restrictions beginning in 2011 dramatically reduced harvest pressure, particularly on juvenile fish.
What happened next stunned fisheries scientists. By 2022, spawning biomass had recovered to 23.2% of its estimated unfished level, surpassing international rebuilding targets roughly a decade earlier than expected. NOAA officially determined the Pacific bluefin stock was rebuilt in 2024 and says it is currently neither overfished nor subject to overfishing.
The recovery has been strong enough that U.S. commercial bluefin catch limits for 2025-2026 were increased by nearly 80% compared with the preceding two-year period.
So this week's parade of giants probably can't be pinned on one convenient explanation. Ocean conditions influence where the fish go and whether they're accessible to Southern California fishermen, while the remarkable recovery of the overall Pacific bluefin population means more fish have survived long enough to become very large.
And these are genuinely ancient travelers by San Diego fishing standard: born on the other side of the world's largest ocean, capable of crossing the Pacific and returning, following food through constantly shifting water - and occasionally ending up hooked to a fishing rod off Southern California.
More than a century after tuna helped transform San Diego from a small port into an international fishing powerhouse, one of the biggest bluefin the region has ever seen has come full circle: from the Pacific to a San Diego fishing boat, back to the city's working waterfront and, beginning Thursday night, onto plates in Little Italy.
For a city that once called itself the Tuna Capital of the World, that's one hell of a fish story.
Originally published on September 9, 2026.
