Page 8 - Sella_M_1929

large size and the method of tying thenip and which are very well known
in Sicily) have been found in the past in the tuna taken in those
fisheries, although almost all of them have been lost through carelessness.
These tuna had been hooked in their passage, immediately preceding,
through the Strait of Messina, where fishing is practiced as far as
Scaletta and Giardinio

The traps for returning tuna fish with their mouths turned pre-
cisely toward the north, that is with the north side of the "lead," and
the hooks confirm that the tuna advance precisely in that direction,
from north to south. Very probably a_ part of the tuna which congregate
in the spawning season along the northern coast of Sicily traverse the
Strait of Messina and descend along the eastern coast^ , where they
supports together with those which reproduce on the spotp the fishreries
for returning tuna,,
On the other hand there have hardly been any notices of hooks
from Messina found in the fisheries for outbound tuna in Calabria and
northern Sicily; which means that the mass of the tuna which support
these fisheries do not traverse, immediately before arriving, the
Strait of Messina,

3) The passage of tuna through the Strait of Gibraltar is by
this time an ascertained phenomenon and, what is more important, the
very large number of Atlantic hooks (25) found in the Mediterranean
testifies that this occurs on a large scaler -- The idea that the tuna
of the Mediterranean are separate from those of the Atlantic was so
rooted from the time of Pavesi on (no less so that was the contrary
theory anciently), that an effort was made to interpret my first findings
of hooks as quite accidental discoveries, which could even be due to
the occasional employment in the Mediterranean of hooks typical of the
Atlantic on the part of sailors on sailing ships and on coastal vessel So

But my investigations would make me deny that this occurs in prac-=
tice,, and in any case, given the number of hooks found,, elementary
considerations of probability suffice here to give certainty.

The so-called proofs of the isolation of the Mediterranean have
been repeated to satiety, they being that of the non-passage of the tuna
through Gibraltar, and that the tuna reproduces in the Mediterranean
and is found there throughout the year (Pavesi )i that the number of tuna
present in the other months is sufficient to be in proportion with the
number which is captured in the tuna fisheries in the spawning season
(Roule)§ that the beginnings -'' the seasons of the Spanish and Mediter-
ranean tuna fisheries are contemporaneous (Pavesi), an-' affirmation
which is not completely exact; that the number of returning tuna taken
in the Spanish and Portuguese fisheries is equal to or greater than the
catch of eastbound fish (De Bragancaj Roulej, etco), which argument can
perhaps serve, if at all, and only up to a certain point, to show that
tuna once accustomed to the Spanish shores do not continue to migrate
from coast to coast toward the east along the banks of the Mediterranean,