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We humans have been at it again - flinging
dead tuna around in the name of fun and sport as the highlight
of the annual Tunarama Festival held in Port Lincoln every
January.
Tunarama is considered to be Regional South Australia's
biggest and most popular event, with a program typical of
seasonal festivals in any rural centre. It's a festival
rich in celebration and entertainment, featuring activities
such as tug-of-war, wheat sheaf tossing competitions, slippery
pole contests, street parades, food stalls and art and craft
markets.(1)
Seasonal festivals have been part of the human experience
since time immemorial and were originally born of a desire
to celebrate nature and the prosperity which flows from
human effort working in cooperation with the natural world.
These festivals were held to give thanks to nature and to
show reverence for life, and although in modern times they
have largely been hijacked by commercialism and consumerism,
this concept is still very much evident especially in the
harvest festivals of rural communities - harvests of wheat,
rice, olives and other basic foodstuffs.
Such festivals, however, take on a somewhat contradictory
meaning when the food celebrated is of animal origin, for
what is meant to be a celebration of life becomes unavoidably
centred around death - that is, the killing of pigs, cattle,
calves, chickens and many other animal species, according
to culture, tradition and culinary choices.
But the most contradictory of all are those festivals which
revolve around activities which also demean the animal in
question - activities such as bull fighting, cattle mustering
competitions, pig castration and, as in the case of Tunarama,
tuna tossing. For the animals concerned this is literally
a case of adding insult to injury, or more precisely, adding
humiliation, offense and obscenity to death.
The Tunarama Festival hosts the so-called World Champion
Tuna Toss Competition. Tuna tossing is seen as a "sport"
similar to hammer throwing, with the difference that the
hammer is replaced with a dead tuna. The organizers take
great pride in tracking down specially-sized 8 kg tuna for
the event.(2)
Whilst fully sympathizing with regional communities and
small towns in their desire to promote themselves as tourist
destinations, one can't help wondering how far we can allow
ourselves to go in the effort to create local attractions.
Tunarama's tuna tossing competition is one of those cases
where basic concepts such as respect for the dignity of
non-human species are dismissed in favor of cheap, life-demeaning
"recreational" activities.
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In the name of fun and sport, the organizers of Tunarama
have chosen to adopt what would seem to be the ultimate
form of disrespect for an animal whose suffering and
death is the cornerstone of their prosperity and local
economy. Surely there are more civilized forms of
self-promotion than flinging around the bodies of
lifeless animals?
The realities of tuna farming
Unfortunately, tuna tossing is not the only uncivilized
aspect of Tunarama and, indeed, of the modern tuna
industry in general. Beneath the seemingly calm waters
of Port Lincoln's Boston Bay, as in any other tuna
farm around the world, thousands of tuna are kept
captive in holding pens, in what is effectively the
marine equivalent to bird and mammal intensive farming.
Like birds and mammals in factory farms on land,
farmed tuna are deprived of their freedom to engage
in basic and vital activities. Their natural life
span is greatly reduced, and their confinement in
an overcrowded environment makes them highly susceptible
to stress and disease.
Southern Bluefin tuna (the species farmed at Port
Lincoln), unlike almost all other fish species, are
warm-blooded animals. This means that normal body
functions like muscle contraction and digestion are
sped up considerably. Bluefin are large, fast-swimming,
deep-sea hunters, their large heart and high proportion
of muscle enabling them to sprint up to 70 km/hour.
They can reach up to 2 metres in length and weigh
up to 200 kg. Their only known spawning ground is
south of Indonesia, from which they migrate southwards
and distribute throughout the southern ocean. Bluefin
are slow-growing and long-lived animals, living up
to 40 years and not reproducing until at least 8 years
old.(3)
Thus we see a long-lived, deep sea-hunting and highly
migratory fish - a fish which normally swims millions
of kilometers in its lifetime (possibly 100 km or
more a day) - confined to shallow coastal waters in
cages 50 metres in diameter overcrowded with thousands
of fish in each and with floors smothered with a mixture
of tuna faeces and uneaten feed. Their natural life
span of 40 years is reduced to a very short, painful
and miserable life.(4)
Even when intensive farming practices are not used,
however, the tuna industry still entails great pain
and misery for these magnificent animals. Tuna fishing
is one of the most barbaric forms of hunting. Traditional
tuna fishing relies on the predictable migratory routes
of the fish to and from their spawning grounds, with
fishermen setting long nets hanging from floats which
stretch for kilometres across the migration path.
When the migrating fish meet the net, they are deflected
from their course and swim along the face of it until
they enter a long corridor formed by two hanging nets
and leading to a chamber (the so-called Chamber of
Death) which has an end wall and a netting floor.
Once the fish have entered this, the men in boats
pull up the free edge of the floor, and the tuna are
trapped. As the men haul in the netting floor, the
fish thrash about, so exhausting themselves that eventually
they can no longer resist the men who jump in beside
them, spike them with hand gaffs and heave them into
the boats.(5)
The fact that they do not reproduce until at least
8 years old (a considerably long time compared to
other fish) leaves the Bluefin tuna population highly
vulnerable to large-scale fishing. During the 1980s
it became clear that the fish population was becoming
seriously depleted, and quotas were imposed. Despite
this, the Bluefin population failed to recover from
the massive onslaught of the global fishing industry
and their numbers continued to nosedive. In 1996 Bluefin
were listed as a critically endangered species by
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
The Australian catch had reached a peak in 1982 of
21,000 megatonnes. By the early 1990s the peak amounted
to 5,000 megatonnes.(6)
Australia's entire Southern Bluefin tuna industry
- catching, growing and exporting - is based in Port
Lincoln. Tuna farming began at Port Lincoln in 1990,
when the tuna fishing industry was on the point of
collapse. The practice involves catching juvenile
Southern Bluefin tuna from the wild as they migrate
3from page 2 through the Great Australian Bight and
towing them in cages to Port Lincoln's harbour. There
the fish are transferred into holding pens roughly
50 metres in diameter (a standard cage holds about
1,700 tuna) where they are fattened for 4 to 9 months
to a weight of around 30 kg, depending on the demands
of the customers. They are then gaffed onto a platform
and killed with a spike in the brain.(7)
It's a short and miserable life for these
magnificent creatures of the deep. What for?
Like other animal-based industries, the tuna industry
is usually justified in terms of economic benefits
(employment, export opportunities, etc). South Australia
has the total market for Southern Bluefin tuna and
provides 100 % of the stock for sale, with nearly
all being exported to Japan. A gilled and gutted fish
averages 33 kg, with the average price on the Japanese
market of $43 per kg, yielding an average of $1,000
per fish.(8) The Australian tuna industry is worth
$322 million a year, Southern Bluefin tuna pulling
about $305 million of the overall tuna market.(9)
However, under increasing pressure from animal rights
and environmental groups, in recent times nutritional
necessity, rather than economic rationalism, has become
the latest excuse in defence of tuna farming and aquaculture
in general. It's a line of argument based on the type
of misinformation about human nutrition typical of
the meat industry.
Seafood, particularly oily fish such as salmon, tuna,
sardines, herrings, perch, mackerel and mullet, has
been strongly promoted by the fish industry - as well
as a subservient scientific community - as the dietary
source of Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs),(10) while
plant sources of these nutrients are rarely mentioned.
Essential Fatty Acids are a group of fatty acids
which are vital for health and, as they can't be produced
by the body, they have to be ingested in food. They
fall within two categories - omega-6 and omega-3 EFAs.
The commonest dietary source of the omega-6 series
is linoleic acid, which is found in a wide range of
foods, especially vegetables and grains, while the
commonest dietary source of the omega-3 series are
eicosapentanoeic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid
(DHA) which are primarily found in seafood.(11) The
fish industry has been capitalizing on this, conveniently
omitting to mention, however, that a third dietary
component of the omega-3 series, alpha-linolenic acid,
can be converted by the human body into EPA and DHA.(12)
This plant form of omega-3 is found in many vegetarian
foods including flaxseed (linseed), hempseed, canola
and walnuts;(13) Brazil nuts, seaweed and algae,(14)
and soybeans and pumpkin seeds (15). Flaxseed contains
about twice as much omega-3 as fish - flaxseed oil
contains 60% omega-3 and 20 % omega-6, while salmon
oil contains 30% omega-3 and 20% omega-6.(16)
Given the abundant availability of EFAs in plant
food, and if the nutritional value is the real justification
for the cruel tuna industry, why not convert to an
economy based on the cultivation of crops rich in
alpha-linolenic acid and leave the tuna alone, respecting
their right to live a free and long life?
Tuna farming - no long term future
Perhaps the cultivation of flaxseed or canola is
not as prestigious as the running of a $305 million-a-year
industry. Yet we would do well to remember that sooner
or later Port Lincoln's economy will have to be replanned
in any case, since tuna farming is an industry with
no long-term future. The reasons?
Firstly, the term 'tuna farming' is highly misleading,
since it suggests that, as in land-based factory farming,
the tuna are bred in captivity. This is not the case,
since farmed tuna are captured from the wild and only
fattened in captivity. Thus, contrary to the tuna
industry's claims, tuna farming does nothing to reverse
the endangered status of the species. In fact, a recent
report of the Bureau of Rural Sciences reveals that
the spawning level of the Bluefin remains at historically
low levels, since overfishing continues to prevent
the survival of enough fish to rebuild the parent
stock.(17)
Secondly, like other intensive animal farming, tuna
farming brings with it environmental problems - the
major one resulting from the accumulation of tuna
faeces and uneaten feed on the sea floor directly
beneath the imprisoned tuna. This rotting matter destroys
the sea floor community of sea grasses and small organisms
and the current management plan is to move the cages
every two years and keep them away for a two year
period. It's not clear that this allows enough time
for complete sea floor recovery.(18)
Last but not least, tuna are carnivorous fish and,
like all other farmed fish-eating species (cod, salmon,
kingfish, etc), they demand many times their body
weight in wild-caught fish which are scooped from
the ocean and fed to them through intensive feeding
practices aimed at speeding the growth of the penned
fish. It takes up to 17 kg of pilchards to produce
1 kg of high priced tuna.(19) Thus tuna farming, like
all other types of fish farming, exacerbates overfishing
of species which are a core link in the food chain
and decreases the total amount of protein available
for other marine animals.(20) For humans, tuna farming
(and aquaculture in general), like other forms of
intensive farming, acts as a protein factory in reverse,
where the protein output is much less than the protein
input. Is this an industry with a long-term future?
In 1990 the tuna fishing industry at Port Lincoln
was on the point of collapse. Tuna farming offers
only a postponement of the industry's complete demise
because it is based on unsustainable practices. In
the meantime the land around Port Lincoln and beyond
patiently awaits the day when crops for direct human
consumption will be grown upon it, and harvest festivals
- celebrations of life - will be held by a humane,
that is a truly human, race. 
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© Vegetarian Action April 2005
- 'Take Off to Tunarama', Port Lincoln Tunarama
Inc, www.tunarama.net, accessed 13/3/2005.
- Littlely, Bryan. 'Tuna Tossers Enjoy
Large-Scale Success', The Advertiser, 29/1/2001.
- Shepherd, Louise. 'Intensive Farming of
Southern Bluefin Tuna', Animals Today, Vol 6, No 2, 1998,
pp.20-21.
- Ibid
- Attenborough, David. The First Eden, The
Mediterranean World and Man, Collins/BBC Books, 1987,
pp. 200-201.
- Shepherd, Louise. Op. cit.
- 'Tuna Farming at Port Lincoln (SA)', Commercial
Fishing, accessed 1/12/2000, www.animalliberation.org.au/fishcom2.html
- Lato, Daniel. '$6m Tuna Lost as Cage Collapses',
The Advertiser, 3/3/2003
- "Fishy Facts According to Scale", Hospitality,
May 2003, p.4.
- Ritter, Malcom. 'Beating the Blues', The
Advertiser, 22/5/ 2003.
- Davies, Stephen and Stewart, Alan. Nutritional
Medicine, Pan Books 1987, pp.110-112.
- Berriman, Mark. 'Depression and Nutrition',
New Vegetarian and Natural Health, Autumn 2004, p.16.
- Walsh, Stephen. 'Maximising Long-Term Health
on a Vegetarian Diet', New Vegetarian and Natural Health,
Winter 2003, p.18.
- Berriman, Mark. Op. cit.
- Ritter, Malcom. Op. cit.
- French, Roger. 'Plant Alternative to Fish
Oil', New Vegetarian and Natural Health, Winter 2003,
p.66.
- Austin, Nigel. 'Our Top Catches Under Siege',
The Advertiser, March 22, 2005
- Shepherd, Louise. Op. cit.
- 'Fish Farming is Wasteful', Commercial
Fishing, accessed 1/12/2000, www.animalliberation.org.au/fishcom2.html
- Ibid
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