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during the season. Locally, salted products are eaten by 94% of the population. The highest

consumption is for the salted ovary bottarga (93%), followed by the salted heart cö (73.3%),

salted muscle tunina (66.6%) and mosciame (60%). Tuna in olive oil is consumed by 87.5%

of the sample. Only 21.4% of the tuna in oil is derived from the local cannery, while 78.6%

of interviewees have continued the tradition of preparing homemade product from fresh tuna

they have stored for part of the year. Although there are plenty of signs that the traditions

associated with the tonnara and mattanza continue, it is becoming rare to find local tinned

tuna from Carloforte. It still exists in many shops – supermarkets, gourmet food and wine

shops, and seafood shops –but is now dominated by tinned tuna and vacuum-packed

bottarga/organs from Sicily. Among the vivid symbols of the tonnara spread across town, it

is difficult to distinguish locally made tins in Carloforte from those that are now made on the

mainland of Sicily with tuna from seines. In 2013 there was still a local trade in preserved

tuna made by the tonnarotti but it was not enough to keep up with local demand. When I

visited in 2013 many of the restaurants and fish shops lamented that most of the salted

products now come from Sicily and use tuna from purse seines. As the restaurateur Secondo

Borghero of Tonno della Corsa says in response to the choice of the tonnara to sell to the

Spanish company:

…the tuna is not just the flesh but also the interior – the stomach, the heart, the
eggs – and now we don’t have the quantity of these and the quality around is also
not great.

New Assemblages

In San Pietro and in Favignana new ontologies are emerging, often with multiple layers of

experience ranging from dissatisfaction with the present situation, a positive reflection on the

past, a sense of precarity about the future, and for some a widening of possibilities and a

greater level of mobility. In this final section I consider what new ontologies are emerging?

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