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caught tuna into supermarkets (Garrett 2016). This commitment is supported by the efforts of

NGOs (WWF, MSC and Greenpeace) working with Pacific Island nations to further develop

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their sustainable pole and line tuna fishery . Again, this is a hopeful event but it also raises

questions about what aspects of sustainability – social, cultural, economic and ecological –

these sustainable tinned tuna products encompass and what aspects of the life cycle of these

products are considered and rendered visible.

What do these two recent events that are part of a process of rendering tuna

sustainable have in common? We know that the tuna species (Atlantic bluefin and skipjack)

at the centre of these events differ greatly. They matter differently in public sustainability

debates and regulation but they are entangled in a sustainability assemblage made up of

marine discourses, environmental ordering, fishery regulation, key concepts, myths and

devices. These two occurrences illustrate the productive capacity of sustainability.

This thesis has investigated the processes of rendering tuna sustainable and the

productive capacity of sustainability. The starting point of my thesis has been that

sustainability is more than a response to a tuna crisis. Through the analysis of my central case

study, the southern Italian tonnare (and Atlantic bluefin), and of my initial case study of

sustainable tinned tuna (and skipjack) I have asked: What is the discursive framing of

sustainability and how does this function to limit and enable the human and more-than-

human entities implicated in sustainability? How does sustainability act on ontological and

epistemological realms? What forms of life come into and out of existence? What forms of

knowledge are supported? What is lost or at risk of loss in the project of sustaining tuna?

In response, I have argued that the productive power of sustaining tuna involves: first

the delineation of the problems and solutions materially and discursively to centre on the

fishery; and secondly the shadow places, things and issues that are produced through the sole

focus on ecological aspects of the fishery that ignores other ecosystems and socio-cultural

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