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what is lost with the loss of mattanza. I explore loss as a defining experience of these

communities: loss of forms of life (human and more-than-human beings), loss of local tuna

fishing industry and loss of community. Drawing on a relational material semiotic approach, I

argue that these transformations are ontologically significant for fishers, the fishing

community and also in relation to the very definition of what constitutes a tonnara.

If we understand the tonnara as formed through an assemblage of human and more-

than-human entities, then it follows that the relationships among those entities are important

to the ontology of the tonnara. If these relationships and practices no longer exist then what

has the tonnara become? Can we still say that the tonnara is a tonnara without these

relationships? This is a question about the degree of change for an entity to transform into an

entirely different entity. It is also a question of what constitutes the socio-cultural dimensions

of a fishery. Together chapters five and six form an analysis of the compatibility and place of

diverse epistemologies and ontologies, and ultimately the compatibility of the project of

sustaining tuna and sustaining a tuna fishery.

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