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thing’ but ‘it is a fishing practice, it’s not like a bull chase where there are two to three

thousand people who come to see how you kill…you do it to earn a living’ (V Clemente

2013, pers. comm. 6th July). The former rais of Favignana, Giacchino Cataldo, also responds

to animal activist accusations, making it clear that it is not done for a spectacle but as a

livelihood.

I don’t do the mattanza for a show but I do it to survive. In reality there are people
who raise veal, pigs, they feed them every day, and then it’s the farmer who kills
the animal…I live to fish. (G Cataldo 2013, pers. Comm. 22 July)

Unprompted Giuliano Greco also reflected on animal welfare attitudes when he told me that

people think the trap and the mattanza are cruel and violent, but ‘it isn’t correct. Yes, there is

some violence, but not like people think. Rather the tuna die immediately, they are killed

within five minutes’ (G Greco 2013, pers. comm. 31st May).

When positioning tuna as a dingpolitik it becomes evident that a politic defining tuna

issues as matters of facts is limiting when there are such different motivations, including fish

welfare, science, species conservation and livelihoods. This is also the case when looking at

sustainability as a dingpolitik. Even though, as I have argued in the previous chapter, there

are common epistemological traditions underpinning sustainability practices, I will

demonstrate below that there are nonetheless diverse and divisive understandings and

practices of sustainability.

Sustainability as Dingpolitik

In August 2012 the 142 metre long Dutch super trawler, the Abel Tasman (formerly MV

Margaris) docked at Port Lincoln in South Australia, with a plan to fish for jack mackerel and

redbait, with a quota of 18,000 tonnes secured by Seafish Tasman, the company responsible

for bringing out the boat. Instead it sat at the port without approval while scientists, the

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