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marine science I analyse the institutionalisation of nature through the natural sciences. After

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providing detail of marine regulations, key concepts and public figures of 20 century marine

conservation, I consider specific ways that marine sustainability discourses are enacted

through institutions and “market devices” (Callon et al. 2007). Ultimately, this chapter

reveals epistemological and ontological limitations of sustainability. It establishes the

function of sustainability discourses in limiting and delineating practices and knowledge, and

who and what participates and how they participate. From this, is a discussion of

inclusion/exclusion and boundary formation, which becomes a thread throughout this thesis.

In later chapters I explore the epistemological and ontological boundaries of the tonnara as a

fishing system, moving to a discussion of how to define, measure and articulate culture in

environmental conflicts.

In chapter four, we return to the Atlantic bluefin and dive into the Mediterranean Sea

and the conflicts surrounding tuna, sustainability and the tonnara. I foreground the various

people and organisations that gather around tuna in San Pietro and Favignana, along with key

groups that participate in wider tuna sustainability debates. My aim is to make salient the

different modes of caring for and being concerned about tuna. With this objective I situate

tuna, sustainability and the tonnara as “dingpolitik”: that is, things around which diverse

groups gather with divisive matters of concerns (Latour 2005). We witness the significance of

the recent socio-technical changes to the tonnara involving the replacement of the local

harvest with a sea cage, which transports tuna to fattening ranches in Malta. In relation to

these recent transformations I begin to argue that fishery regulations, particularly quota, in

combination with industrial competition and a lucrative market for bluefin, are adversely

impacting the tonnara on numerous socio-cultural and ecological levels. This argument

becomes central to the remainder of the thesis and the locus to think through the dilemma of

sustaining tuna and a tuna fishery along with its surrounding cultural practices.

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