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longliners and would process the fish locally. The company grew by buying tuna cheaply and

selling it on for a good price. But their expansion in the 1990s coincided with a decline in

tuna and then tighter controls on fishing in the early 2000s. Javier insists that they now ‘work

within a small margin’ and the ‘value depends on the Japanese market…the market could be

ten euros one year, the next eighteen, and the next five’ (2013, pers. comm. 22 June). To

manage in response to this situation they expanded to fattening ranches and increased vessel

numbers. Now the company works with numerous fisheries across the Mediterranean to

obtain a maximum share of bluefin and in 2013 this was about 1600 tonnes in total, including

211 tonnes from the tonnare. The ranching helps the company to increase the value of its

commodity. It involves the capture of wild tuna and the fattening of the tuna to increase its

value (Longo 2011, p. 321). Javier explains ‘if you fish one day in June [for example] and the

tuna is 100kg, then at the end of the day when you finish you can sell them at about 140kg’

(2013, pers. comm. 22 June). The increase in value helps the company work within this tight

margin. The company has also established partnerships with some prominent Japanese

companies, including Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Maruha (2013, pers. comm. 22 June).

Our interview finishes when Javier receives a call from Malta. The tug will arrive in

two hours. The tuna will then take a twenty-day tug journey and spend some time in fattening

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pens, after which they will be killed under water with a gun . The Fuentes group then moves
the tuna to a factory vessel where the tuna are processed on board and, apart from a few fresh

ones sent by plane, are deep frozen and shipped to Japan.

With the equivalent of almost the entire 2013 Italian tuna quota and through the use of

fattening ranches, the Fuentes group has clearly developed ways to operate effectively within

the contemporary tuna industry and regulatory framework. Indeed, according to Greenpeace

(2008, p. 2) they are the largest tuna ranching company worldwide and dominate in the

Mediterranean. This has been enabled by economic capital and business relationships, and

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