History and Tuna fishing in the Adraitic

[Free_Jumper]

Scandinavian Tuna thread is pretty interesting, thought perhaps some historical perspectives might be as well. Anyone know more about Adriatic tuna fishing history?

My interest started when I ran across this kind of background about tuna fishing many years back doing analysis in the Adriatic. There was an old book that showed pictures of fisherman in row boats towing nets being directed by a fellow in a tree on a rocky bluff to surround tuna against incredible scenery. I found images similar to the book and attached. Then years later ran into Croatians in Guam crewing the tuna seiners - interesting folks with very interesting traditions.

http://secretdalmatia.wordpress.com/...ng-in-croatia/


"Tuna fishing has a loong tradition in the Adriatic. It probably dates back to the Illyrian times and Greek colonization in the 5th century BC.
I recently purchased a lovely postcard from the early 20th century showing a traditional tunara or observation point in small town of Bakar near Rijeka."

"Tuna fish was always one of the most important fish species in the Adriatic and the waters of our shores were always full of food for them. The Atlantic Bluefin is one of the dominant Tuna species and it is widespread in the entire Adriatic. Of course, not as much as it was before since the years of heavy fishing resulted in fish hardly reaching sizes/weight as it used to. Especially big were the fish caught near Šibenik so even it the 15th century local writer Šizgoric wrote how the fish caught in the St. Ante Channel near Šibenik were of monstrous proportions! It is even documented that the largest fish caught in the Adriatic was 850 Kg or 1873 lbs and that is nearly 400 lbs more than the one caught in 1979 and considered to be the biggest:"

http://www.bigmarinefish.com/photos_..._tuna_pg4.html

[Heli Sports]

Anyone know more about Adriatic tuna fishing history?

This subject was visited here only a few weeks ago. I'll repost this information and try to add a bit more.

Although there still are large Bluefin in various parts of the Adriatic Sea at times, this region has been particularly hard hit by overfishing and tuna over 100 kgs are now relatively uncommon there. So much so that Croatian tuna ranchers have been forced to source their stock from production of large spawners harvested and towed in transportation cages from the Levante Sea spawning grounds and even from the central Mediterranean. Though large Bluefin were once prolific in the Adriatic, the report of a specimen weighing 850 kilos is certainly an exaggeration.

The Adriatic Sea is actually a nursery area for the smallest juvenile Bluefin in the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to 1996 there was no minimum size limit for Bluefin in the Mediterranean. During the early to mid 1990's, Italian and Croatian seiners would work schools of baby Bluefin of 2-4 kilos individual weight. Bluefins of this size are approximately 2 years of age and were very highly esteemed as food in Southern Italy. In 1996 ICCAT set the minimum size allowed at 1.8 kg. Yes, that's right, about 4 lbs. At this size, these baby Bluefins don't really look like tuna, their appearance is still much like that of a Mackerel. I can recall seeing tractor trailer loads of these baby tuna during the mid 90's, caught by the seiner fleet in Pescara, Italy. Truly a disgusting sight!

In 2004, ICCAT raised the minimum size for Mediterranean Bluefin to 10 kgs, and in 2006 it was again raised to 30 kgs. There are Bluefin of all sizes in the Adriatic Sea. Commercial season began there in early March. At the beginning of the season, mainly very small individuals were harvested by a large seiner fleet in Pescara, on the East coast of Italy. There was once a small fleet of Italian longline vessels operating out of the Ravenna area of Italy during the Winter months. The fish caught by this fleet were larger (up to 200 kgs) and of particularly excellent quality! Nowadays, virtually the entire Italian seiner production is ranched and controlled by an Italian "co-operative." Read whatever you'd like into that.

Adriatic tuna, even small indivuduals are generally of very good quality, particularly high in fat content. Before tuna ranching was developed in this area, wild Adriatic Bluefin, caught both by seine and longline, often achieved excellent prices in Tokyo. These fish were particularly esteemed by Japanese wholesalers due to their excellent flavor. I believe this was due to their unique diet. Adriatic tuna feed on interesting things like Cuttlefish, Mantis Shrimp and other Crustaceans. However, this is not the case with ranched production from Croatia.

Croatia was one of the first countries to develop modern tuna ranching technology in the Mediterranean area. Some enterprising ex-pat Croatians from Australia started up ranches in the Dugi Otok region of Croatia. They had some initial success, but like the operators in Spain during the early 2000's, lost a great deal of money due to oversupply in Japan, cost of feed, escape/kills, etc. Due to lack of availability of large individuals, the Croatian style of tuna ranching is based somewhat on holding juvenile tuna for multiple years untill they are of marketable size. As opposed to Spanish ranches which utilize vulnerable "spawning" Giants captured from the Balearic Island and Gulf of Sidra spawning areas to fatten up for harvesting within several months or so of capture.

The Croatian tuna ranching industry has been forced into retraction over the past several years. As in many parts of the region with tuna fattening operations, capacity greatly exceeded available quota, so a number of ranches have ceased operations. From 2000 through 2007, Croatia produced approximately 2500 metric tons of ranched Bluefin per year, although Croatia's allocation of Bluefin quota from ICCAT is less than 900 MT. Most of this production was loaded directly on Asian freezer vessels, but quite a bit was air shipped to Japan. There are still air shipments of fresh ranched Croatian Bluefin arriving in Tokyo during the winter months, but auction prices for these tuna are inferior to the production from Spanish farms.

I don't know a great deal about sportfishing for Bluefin in Croatia, though there are some small fish being trolled there using modern spreader bar technology. During the 1990's there was a pretty good chunking fishery for large-mediums and giants in the Ravenna to Anconna region of Italy and there were some very good tuna fishermen there.

As you have pointed out, Croatia (and Italy) had a long history of Bluefin fishing in the Adriatic Sea with tremendous landings of Giant Bluefin Tuna. Sadly this fishery, as well as many others throughout the Mediterranean Sea have declined precipitously. I hope compliance and inforcement continue to improve in this region. There were once prolific Bluefin fisheries in the Black Sea and Bosphorous, these stocks are likely extinct now.

If you are interested in learning more about the Bluefin fishery in Croatia, here are a couple of interesting documents:

http://ressources.ciheam.org/om/pdf/c60/03600103.pdf

http://www.iccat.int/Documents/CVSP/...V054020465.pdf

[Patudo]

Heli,

I'd be very interested in your opinion as to how the Mediterranean bluefin fishery ought to be regulated. How many tons do you think could/should be sustainably removed from the fishing areas - Balearic Islands, Adriatic, Gulf of Sidra, Eastern Mediterranean etc? Which practices and gear types are the least sustainable? Should time/area closures be imposed to protect spawning fish, if so when and where you do think these would be the most effective?

Is there any significant bluefin production from further east and south in the Mediterranean eg Malta, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt?

I would have thought an 850 kg bluefin within the realm of possibility if it was caught in historic times. I didn't to take a reference, but have come across in miscellaneous reading mentions of very large fish in the 500-700kg class from places like the Bosphorous. There's even a vertebra excavated from an archaeological site that is thought to have come from a fish estimated at 800 kgs +. I wonder what is the largest bluefin ever brought into the Japan markets?

Thanks
patudo

[Roddy Hays]

I read a paper once which discussed the excavations and findings from NW America (Washington state), where indigenous Amercian indian peoples once trapped and caught large quantities of bluefin before the Europeans arrived. Some of those fish were very large too. I also have, somewhere, accounts of how the Cypriots and Greeks (particularly in Crete) used explosives in the years after WWII to catch bluefin. Many fish were lost as they sank too deep, obviously, but divers did make the fishery worthwhile for pure sustinence sakes. I'd be interested to know what size some of these fish were, after the relative peace of the war years.

Heli - the sport fishery in Croatia is still going strong. Capt Olaf Grimkowski is there very summer, in between fishing Ascension and the Azores. They catch a few small swordfish too, if thta's any interest. Average size of the rod caught catch is under 100kgs, I would think. Not many fish over 200 kgs are landed any more.

[Heli Sports]

I'd be very interested in your opinion as to how the Mediterranean bluefin fishery ought to be regulated. How many tons do you think could/should be sustainably removed from the fishing areas - Balearic Islands, Adriatic, Gulf of Sidra, Eastern Mediterranean etc? Which practices and gear types are the least sustainable? Should time/area closures be imposed to protect spawning fish, if so when and where you do think these would be the most effective?

The obvious reason for the depletion of Bluefin stocks in the Mediterranean Sea is the targeting of the species on their spawning grounds by industrial seiner fleets.

Bluefin Tuna have been harvested from the Mediterranean Sea since antiquity. Virtually every country with a coastline in this region has a history of trapping Bluefin. Dalians date back to the 15th century in the Dardanelles, Sea of Marmara and Bosphorous. The ancient Greeks and Romans captured bluefin in Almadrabas scattered throughout Southern Spain and France. Tonnares in Italy date back to 1500. Purse seining began in the 1950's, and still the traditional Mediterranean fisheries thrived. It was not until modern industrial seining began that the traditional Mediterranean fisheries collapsed. Modern seining has displaced the ancient fisheries almost entirely (trap landings of Bluefin for the entire Med are now only 100 MT annually), as well as other traditional and more sustainable methods including Italy's longline and harpoon fisheries and hand-gear in Spain (less than 3000 MT combined annually). Entire villages and islands with economies that had thrived for centuries solely on tuna production and proccessing, have fallen into depression from lack of production.

Bluefin are now absent from many areas of historic abundance in the Med, and rather difficult to catch in quantity in others. This is entirely due to the developement of modern tuna ranching technology. About seven or eight years ago, the French government began subsidizing the replacement of Jean Marie Avallone's five vessels (as well as those of others) with super seiners so that he could fill the cages of an unscrupulous tuna rancher in Spain named Francisco Fuentes. During the early 2000's, an explosion in the expansion of tuna ranching capacity swept throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Landings of Bluefin skyrocketed in order to satiate the demand of greedy ranchers like Fuentes and Ginez Mendez in Spain, Charlie Azzopardi in Malta, Nedim Anbar in Turkey, Mislav Bezmalinovic of Croatia, Saif Al Islam Kaddaffi in Libya. et al.

The result of all this is that Giant Bluefin have become rather difficult to capture in the Mediterranean Sea. You would think that with all the pressure on ICCAT and the EU and North African countries that TAC levels would be reduced to sustainable levels to facilitate the rebuilding of the stock. And more importantly that they would give the species a break while they are on their spawning grounds. The problem is that Mediterranean Giant Bluefin can now only be captured in any quantity with any regularity while they are in the process of spawning.

Bluefin are very vulnerable to capture while they are in a spawning attitude. Laden with ripe ovaries and testes, Mediterranean spawners aggregate mainly in three gyres where they mill on the surface in cuniform formations. Easy targets on their spawning grounds in the Balearic, Tyrrhenian and Levante Seas. The French and Spanish seiner fleets have an interesting protocol for setting their nets. The first vessel will set its net to encircle an entire school, perhaps as large as 400 or more tons. Subsequent vessels will encircle the first set so that not one single individual will escape. Vessels standing by in the area will share in the catch, even without setting their nets, as the catch is herded by divers into transfer cages that are towed, sometimes as far as 1000 miles to fattening operations. The entire spawning process for Bluefin is disrupted every season as these fish are buzzed by aircraft while the fleets from several nations converge on these spawning grounds. This past season, spawning activity by captive Bluefin in transfer cages was observed, however it's not known to what degree the results were viable.

It seems simple enough to me. The current TAC level of about 17,000 MT may or may not exceed MSY for the Mediterranean Sea, but ICCAT should certainly close off the three important Mediterranean spawning grounds in the Balearic, Tyrrhenian and Levante Seas from early June through July, and give these fish a chance to reproduce unmolested. As obvious as this seems, there is just too much resistance to this idea for ICCAT to act. Several governments have too much invested in large seiner vessels, the ranches employ many personel (divers, technicians, laborers, etc.) and require a great deal of stock in order to be viable. Bluefin have been overfished in the Mediterranean to the point that the spawning aggregations are the only source of stock for the ranches. There are some arguements in favor of targeting spawning aggregations of tuna (mainly for stock accessment purposes), but this fishing comes at a great cost to so many traditional and more sustainable Mediterranean tuna capture methods such as the Sardinian and Sicilian longline and harpoon fisheries.

On a more positive note. The Mediterranean Bluefin stock is not only much larger than that of the Western Atlantic, it's also more resiliant. Mediterranean Bluefin reach sexual maturity at a significantly younger age than Western Atlantic Bluefin and seem to have a much higher fecundity. The gyres in the Mediterranean may provide an even better spawning environment than the Gulf of Mexico. Hopefully the recent improvements in compliance and enforcement in the region will continue and will be enough for the stock to eventually rebound at the reduced catch levels. Whether or not it will with continued seining on the spawning grounds remains to be seen.

Is there any significant bluefin production from further east and south in the Mediterranean eg Malta, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt?

Malta has a long history of harvesting Bluefin by tradional methods but this nation has a very small Bluefin quota. Azzopardi fisheries operates a feeding operation in Malta, with tuna sourced from both Maltese and Libyan seiners. Spawning Bluefin are still relatively abundant in the Gulf of Sidra and Tyrrhenian Sea during June and early July. Much of the Spanish ranch production comes from this area and is towed across the Mediterranean to feeding cages in the Alicante, Spain area. Malta harvests about 260 MT annually.

Cyprus is adjacent to the Levante Sea spawning grounds. Although Cyprus has only very small landings of Bluefin, there have been some fattening operations located there. I am not sure if Cypriot ranches are still operating, Cyprus had landings of only 132 MT in 2008 and 3 MT in 2009.

Israel is really the only Mediterranean nation with no Bluefin fishery. I believe Israel harvested about 14 MT in 1996, however with no real history of landings, the nation was unable to aquire any quota from ICCAT and has not declared any Bluefin landings since.

It's possible that ancient Egyptians were the first fishermen to ever harvest Bluefin Tuna. There are carvings of Tuna on the walls at the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in the Valley of Kings near Luxor. Egypt sends a delegation to every ICCAT meeting and begs for quota. However, if they have had any landings in modern history, they were miniscule. Syria, on the other hand, has declared landings of about 50 MT annually over the past four years.

I would have thought an 850 kg bluefin within the realm of possibility if it was caught in historic times. I didn't to take a reference, but have come across in miscellaneous reading mentions of very large fish in the 500-700kg class from places like the Bosphorous. There's even a vertebra excavated from an archaeological site that is thought to have come from a fish estimated an 800 kgs +. I wonder what is the largest bluefin ever brought into the Japan markets?

I have about 20 years of experience sourcing various tuna species from all over the world including New England, the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean. And I have spent a number of seasons in Canada where some of the very largest specimens have historically been harvested (including P.E.I., Antigonish and Port Hood). The largest Bluefins that I have ever seen or ever heard about were a handfull of individuals that had true dressed weights (headed, gutted, tail and fins removed) of about 1300 lbs. Fish of this size are landed about once every other year or so in Nova Scotia, and rarely in the Gulf of Mexico. I have never heard of or seen a Bluefin that dressed out much over 1300 lbs. A fish of this weight is about the size of a VW Bug. I guess it's possible that larger specimens once existed, but unless someone can provide a substantiated report, I'm skeptical about an 850 kg individual.

The largest Bluefin ever sold at Tokyo's Tsukiji market was a specimen from Canada of 497 kgs dressed weight that sold there in 1995. This fish is a bit larger than a Japanese tuna of 496 kilos (Japanese production is head on, gilled and gutted) that sold at Tsukiji in 1986. Tsukiji is not Japan's prime market for the very largest Bluefin. Because of regional taste preferences and the different display and auction methods, the market in Sapporo usually accomodates the very largest Canadian specimens so Bluefin of significantly larger size have been sold in Sapporo, including the 1300 lb dressed weight individuals I mentioned. I can tell you from experience that it's a big pain in the *** handling and exporting tuna of this size. They do not even come close to fitting inside conventional tuna coffins.

[CaptainAlex]

Great Stuff, Heli ... thanks for the fascinating read & sharing a lifetime of experience and observations

[cap'n nasty]

Awesome read Heli. Thanks for sharing all of your experiences. Are you involved with ABTA, or any pro fishing organizations???? Your knowledge is priceless.

[aloop]

Heli from the 1st and 2nd pic, where those the precursor to the tower and pulpit, the harpoon fishery?

[Free_Jumper]

Wow, those engineering approaches (towwwwwer and pulllllpit) speak volumes about relatively enclosed and mostly calm waters! 10 or 12 meters of hull?, what kind of keel or ballasting is going on?

The lever arm moment for roll and or pitch has got to be exciting........

[Heli Sports]

...what kind of keel or ballasting is going on?

The ballasting probably consists of boulders and large stones.

Although vessels have been harpooning Swordfish and Tuna from the Straits of Messina for over two thousand years, these 12-16 meter "Passerellas" have changed very little since the 1950's.

The weather is generally excellent in this region of Sicily during harpoon season (May through August). However, the Strait of Messina acts a barrier between the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Seas and the extremely strong tidal currents flowing through the strait, over diverse bottom structure, creates a phenomenon of upwelling rich in nutrients, zooplankton and other nekton populations.

"Here swordfish is able to swim toward the surface and to concentrate in zones where food is abundant along frontal zones where currents or water masses intersect creating turbulence and sharp gradients of sea surface temperature (SST) and salinity."

This is a facinating fishery, with a rather odd operating protocol that dates back centuries. Unfortunately, as the result of overfishing by drift gillnetters and longliners, Swordfish are no longer prolific in this area. Naturally tuna are extremely scarce here as well. Due to an earthquake in 1908, historical landings data that dated back to the 16th century (when there were over 300 harpoon vessels participating in this fishery) was destroyed. Landings data is generally derived from captains log books. Because virtually all of the production from this fleet is absorbed by local markets, current catch data may be incomplete.

Currently there are only 12 harpoon vessels operating out of Messina and Calabria, down from 24 in 1990. Although these vessels target Shortbill Spearfish, Sharks, Mahi and even Mola Mola in addition to Swordfish and Bluefin, CPUE in this fishery is pathetically low. Average landings per vessel are approximately 40-50 pieces of Swordfish totaling about 3000-4000 lbs annually, with perhaps 1 or 2 small individual tunas harvested each year. Shortbilled Spearfish make up a significant part of production.

It's pretty sad to think that a fishery with such an incredibly ancient history has declined to the point that just a few old men persevere for "old-times sake," but just as with the tonnaras on the other side of Sicily in Favignana, this fishery and its participants have been displaced by modern industrial fishing.

I found an interesting blog with some rather cool photos of this fishery. Notice different darts that are used for the various different species that are targeted. Also note the tiny size of the Swords that are harvested:

http://www.parallelozero.com/visual_rep.php?cod=358