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In San Pietro and Favignana, and within wider sustainable tuna debates, conflicts

occur over the process of regulations, management decisions, data used to estimate stock,

quota allocation, fairness, and beliefs about what is and is not cruel or what is and is not

sustainable. Environmental conflicts often arise through diverse social and ethical

investments (conservation, labour, tradition or animal welfare). The question of whose

knowledge matters and how certain knowledge systems present an issue is also relevant to the

tonnara. Often in these situations fish facts are strategically mobilised or contested, and

matters of facts can turn to matters of conflict.

Yet, the term conflict can be limiting, which is why I use matters of concern, care and

conflict to develop my analysis. First, conflict assumes an opposition among actors and so

can sideline collaborations that do occur when participants come together, albeit with

differing concern or solutions for the future of fish and fishing cultures. An example is, when

fishermen put forward a hypothesis about the influence of mistral winds on tuna migration

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and their entry into the traps, and then marine biologists put that hypothesis to test (Addis et

al. 2013). Through this collaboration scientists were able to prove a correlation between the

strong and cold northwesterly mistral wind and the abundance of tuna coming into the traps

(Addis et al. 2013). The term environmental conflict can also deflect our attention from

things. Returning to San Pietro we see that amongst the people the assembly is thick with

things – there is a bio-techno-cultural and affective ecology of marine life, synthetic nets, a

sea cage, fattening ranches, underwater cameras, tagging devices, licenses, quota, hooks,

boats, tins, tastes, evocative campaigns and newspaper articles. Scientists, tonnarotti, owners,

traders, coast guards, journalists, fishermen, tourists, campaigners, and a social scientist

gather around these things with diverse concerns and practices of caring. They survey, fish,

eat, control, write about and campaign in relation to these things. Finally, by bringing the

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