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you haven’t studied, it will be difficult to do something… (2013, pers. comm.
date)
Some few years later in 2015 Amoroso sends me through a link to a news article. In
November 2015 Amoroso, as head of the l’Organizzazione di Produttori (O.P.) della Pesca di
Trapani (the Organization of Producers of Trapani Fish) agreed to work with the Columbian
fishing industry to develop a plan for their sustainable artisanal fisheries, including the
diversification, development of traceability and the exploitation of traditional fish species
(‘L’OP Pesca Trapani esempio internazionale di best pratice. Firmata carta di intenti in
Colombia’ 2015). In a similar way to the connections fostered through the taste for bluefin
(e.g. tonnarotti in Favignana and San Pietro, with traders, restaurateurs and consumers in
Japan) so too has sustainability afforded projects and connections among diverse people and
places. Such connections are part of the process of assembling sustainability.
Conclusion
What is sustained in the project of sustaining tuna? What is lost? What new forms of life are
emerging? In this chapter I responded to these questions by considering ways the term
tradition is mobilised in the contemporary context of a changing tonnara, fishery governance
and a crisis summarised by too many fishers and too few fish (Power 2005, p. 102). I framed
transformation as a relational process involving a configuration of human and more-than-
human – discourses, tools, sustainability “myths”, and a bifurcation of nature/culture. I have
argued that transformations in the tonnara are ontologically significant for fishers and the
fishing community and also in relation to the very definition of what constitutes a tonnara.
As we have seen tradition has a strategic, political and discursive function. For one,
the mobilisation of tradition involves the creation of borders of permissibility (Schochet
2004, p.296), wherein the process of defining tradition is selective and exclusive. This results
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