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…provides high-quality age-specific biometrics of stock biomass, for both the
sedentary and migrating fraction of the EBFT stock, as well as a range of
biological data that constitutes an invaluable component of EBFT stock
assessment models…[therefore there is an]…opportunity to effectively use
“almadrabas” as “Tuna Scientific Observatories”, by increasing their full
cooperation with ICCAT and its scientific programs, by providing a full access to
their detailed catch and effort data, giving access to biological sampling and
allowing to tag and release EBFT and furthermore the allocation of a scientific
quota for the ICCAT Atlantic-Wide Research Program on BFT... (2015, pp. 47-
48)

Inevitably the EU proposal participates in a process of making visible and thus also

rendering invisible. Both tradition and sustainability are terms that are put to use through the

proposal and involve shining a light onto some things – issues, practices, species,

technologies – in this way rendering them visible, while simultaneously, through the act of

directing attention to those things, rendering others less visible. In the case of the EU

proposal, modes of harvest move out of sight, including the harvest in Malta, and the now

ceased local mattanza harvest and its socio-political context and controversies. The EU

proposal could elaborate these specific social aspects and draw on additional social research

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of the tonnare . The limited social research is symptomatic of the focus on gear as the point
of interest and an analysis by fishery regulators, and, importantly, of the focus on gear as the

defining feature of a fishery. This is understandable from a technical, scientific and even a

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political position . However, on ecological and socio-cultural accounts, the focus on gear

(and by this I mean the trap) falls short of an extensive biocultural analysis and reveals

paradoxes inherent in the four-pillar model of sustainability.

Drawing on my framing of assemblages, we can say that the contemporary traps are

made possible through a network of scientists, tools, fishermen, fishery science knowledge,

some fisher knowledge, tuna, nets, cages, divers, quota, boats, incisions, traders, tourism,

discourses (of tradition, sustainability and of saving tuna), scientific papers, EU meetings,

passionate men and diverse global tastes for tuna. We can also say that the proposal knits an

even tighter assembly together. The EU member states are core components of the assembly

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