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Mattanza Love and Death in the Sea of Sicily by Theresa Maggio Perseus, Cambridge, MA, 2000. 279 pp. $25, C$37.95, L17.50. ISBN 0-7382-0269-X.
iant bluefin tuna have inspired fishers, scientists, poets, and painters for over 4000 years. Their sheer size, power, and endurance, and the warmth of their bodies compared with their environment, provoke an intensity of interest that few other fish engender. Aristotle was fascinated by bluefin migrations, Plutarch described their schooling behavior as a way "to stay together for the love of one another," and the Phoenicians stamped coins with images of bluefin.
Bluefin tuna are distributed worldwide, with three separate species recognized from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern oceans. All bluefins share similar life-history traits involving extensive migrations and localized spawning areas. Giant bluefin have few predators except for man, and for millennia bluefin tuna fishing was limited to coastal or island subsistence fisheries and smallscale commercial ventures using nets, traps, or harpoons. But in the late 1960s, fishing effort on the high seas increased dramatically and declining catches forced many of the local trap fisheries in the Mediterranean to close down. Then in the 1980s, the value of premium, fat-laden bluefin rose sharply as the flesh became a delicacy on the Japanese sashimi market. Individual bluefin became so valuable that they traveled air freight in insulated coffins to Japan.
The fish lottery began. Fishermen were richly rewarded for individual tuna in this gold rush. In the past five years, combined Atlantic and Mediterranean landings of bluefin tuna have reached historic highs. Today, individual giant bluefin can sell for as much as $45,000, making this...