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than address the issue (2013 pers. comm. 20 June). Salvatorre Masnata, a community

member aged in his seventies who has worked the tonnare seasonally, says that this gesture is

more likely a way to promote the tonnara (2013, pers. comm. 21 June).

Goliardo Rivano offers a balanced explanation of the tensions among the community:

Because the whole town is used to knowing the tonnara in a certain way, you do
the mattanza, they come to see the mattanza, the tuna, the population. When the
cage arrived they [Fuentes group] said give everything to the cages. But…there’s
no longer the traditional mattanza and other traditions. [And so the community
ask] “Why, why the cage?”… Because they would like to live the tonnara the way
that they lived it traditionally, in the olden days. So I explain to them, it’s
impossible to have that…It’s difficult to explain but if it wasn’t for the cage the
tonnara would most likely have ended… Now, I believe because the cage we are
able to carry on with work, the cage want tuna and we give them the tuna. (2013,
pers. comm. 17 June)

But Rivano also acknowledges that the tonnara is in a precarious situation. That is,

even if the arrangement with the Fuentes group has allowed the tonnara to continue

operations, ‘if next year the cage [Fuentes group] tells you I’m not coming to

Carloforte, then who do you give this tuna to? Then once again everything, the

industry closes’ (G Rivano 2013, pers. comm. 17 June).

The absence of a tonnara in Favignana

While many in San Petro were anxious about a potential closure of the tonnara and frustrated

by the consortium’s business decisions, the tonnara in Favignana had been closed since 2007.

In this post-tonnara period, the fishermen of Favignana mostly catch a variety of species,

using small motor-powered boats and nets that they place in the nearby sea overnight. The

fact that the tonnara was closed was certainly not apparent when I first arrived on the island.

The thriving tourist industry based on the historical and almost mythical status of tuna does a

good job of concealing this fact. But nonetheless, tensions existed and centred on other fish,

on non-local industrial vessels that enter the Marine Protected Area of Favignana and fish

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