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with and the fishermen’s sense of purpose compromised.

Let us return to the experiences and forms of life of those who have fished and

preserved tuna in San Pietro and Favignana. What better place to start than the curing room at

the back of the land tonnara. It was 2013 and I had just hopped off the boat from a routine

check of the trap when Luigi led me around to the room. Stepping through the door, the

temperature dropped. The room was built of stone and cement and was covered with layers

of salt, lime and dust, creating a mix of beige, white and grey hues. Renato (pictured in fig.

6.4) stood at a long table and caressingly rubbed salt onto large pieces of bottarga with his

hands while we spoke of the 27 years, or seasons as he referred to them, he had worked in the

tonnara. Most days he ran this small production curing (salting and drying) tuna organs,

mostly bottarga. These days the tonnarotti use only the organs from tuna that die in the net,

which they register and bring to land, or from the mattanza when or if it takes place.

Previously, when mattanza was the sole harvest method, all of the organs went to local

production and trade. For some, curing, trading and eating tuna organs and preserved tuna

flesh was part of growing up and part of becoming a tonnarotti. Luigi recalls how he lived

only twenty metres from the plant at Portoscuso:

…that particular smell of the bottarga, of those things, when I was younger,
eleven years old, we would all go to the cellar/factory and watch how it was all
made, the bottarga... (2013 pers. comm. 18 June)

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