Spanish fisherman Rafael Marquez, 40, is seen next to “Almadraba” tunas caught during the opening of the season for tuna fishing near to the coast of Barbate, Cadiz province, southern Spain, Wednesday, April 27, 2011. Almadraba tuna is caught in an elaborate and age-old Andalusian fishing method, used in Spanish coastal areas close to the Strait of Gibraltar since Phoenician times. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)Almadraba tuna is tuna caught by an elaborate and age-old Andalusian technique of setting nets in a maze that leads to a central pool called “copo”.
The maze uses just two net lines, called “raveras”. One net is connected to the shore and other line is secured in deeper water. Those lines have smaller oblique lines which lead to the central pool. This simple maze works because tuna are not able to see the exit from the central pool, and remain inside. The floor of the central pool is then raised in order to catch the tuna and when that floor is held up, there is little room left for tuna and they are then caught easily and slaughtered.
The circle of wooden boats off Spain’s Atlantic coast gradually becomes smaller as the men of the almadraba – to the rhythmic sound of shouts and laughter – pull in the huge nets by hand. Suddenly, the surface of the water begins to turn white and within seconds it’s become a frothing, heaving mass of huge fish, their fins slicing through the water in a frenzied attempt to escape their fate.
On the boats, the operation shifts up a gear. To cries of “anda!” and “vamonos!”, the younger men leap into the thrashing pool to hook the fish and help haul them into the boats. The scene is charged with exhilaration and adrenalin as this centuries-old struggle of man against beast is acted out, the men battling for supremacy with fish perhaps triple their body weight.
And then it’s all over, the only sound the dull thud of tails on wooden decks as the fish flail hopelessly in their final throes.
The men of Barbate on the Costa de la Luz have been catching blue-fin (or red) tuna this way for around three thousand years. Very little has changed in that time; there’s no machinery, no hi-tech gadgets. Just a few simple wooden boats, a complicated system of nets and sheer brute force.
This is not to say that it’s a simple operation, however. In fact, the almadraba – based on a system designed by the Phoenicians – consists of a labyrinth of nets which stretch for several kilometres from the coast out to sea; as they migrate from the Atlantic to their spawning ground in the Mediterranean, the tuna are guided into the heart of the labyrinth. Divers are sent down periodically to check how many fish are in the innermost chamber, and it’s then that the levantá (literally the raising or lifting up) begins.
The beauty of the system – and the reason it’s lasted this long – is that it is completely sustainable. The mesh of the nets is big enough to allow the younger tuna to escape, enabling them to continue the life cycle and maintain stocks. As Ana Santos, marine biologist for the Almadraba Fish Products Organisation, points out: “There’s no way we would still be fishing tuna three thousand years later unless it was sustainable. There would be no fish left.”
But whilst the four almadrabas along the Cádiz coast – at Tarifa, Zahara de los Atunes, Barbate and Conil – continue with their traditional methods, all around them it has been a ‘get-rich-quick’ mayhem. Desperate to feed an insatiable Japanese market, big business has been deploying satellite-assisted dragnet trawlers and spotter planes to hoover up mature and immature stocks.
The result has been ever dwindling stocks, smaller fish and warnings from scientists that the Mediterranean tuna population may never recover. The figures speak for themselves. The past decade has seen the total almadraba catch almost halve from 15,000 in 1997 to 8,000 in 2007 – and that was considered a good year. And it’s all a very long way from the glory days of the old almadraba at Sancti Petri with three levantás a day and a total haul of 70,000 tuna.
All hopes now rest on a new plan by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). This includes smaller quotas; reducing the minimum catch from 10kg to 30kg in a bid to ensure the fish complete their reproductive cycle; banning the use of spotter planes by big trawlers; and regular inspections to ensure the rules are being complied with.
But conservationists remain to be convinced. WWF/Adena spokesman Raul García says the real problem is that the industry is driven by a market “which in many countries is run by mafias.” The conservation group would rather see a complete ban on fishing for atún rojo in order to prevent its extinction – with the almadraba the sole exception to the ban. “They barely account for one per cent of the total amount of tuna caught,” he says, “and they are also an important way of monitoring the species. For scientific reasons alone we should guarantee the future of the almadraba.”
Not one of the tuna caught in the nets off Barbate reaches dry land on the Costa de la Luz. Every fish is taken directly to a Japanese boat that is permanently moored in the port during the season from April until mid-June, and from there they are taken to market in Tokyo.
The demand for atún rojo and almadraba tuna in particular is enormous, not just in Japan but in restaurants throughout Europe as well. Considered the pata negra of the sea, the tuna is marketed as an artesan product.
“This ancient practice is less an industry than an art,” says Ana Santos of the Alamadraba Fish Products Organisation. “Almadraba tuna has its own quality certificate. This is food from the wild, it’s of the highest quality and the animals have suffered very little stress. Within an hour of being caught, the tuna is processed and ready to go. You can’t get much fresher than that.”
Back on land, I’m among a group of journalists taken to see a tuna being cut up into its constituent parts. In the Frialba processing plant in Barbate port, a 240kg tuna bought for around 3,000 euros is hauled in. A chain saw is used to top and tail it, and then the fish is cut up by hand. The ronqueo, as it’s known, is an art in itself; within a short space of time, the dark red meat has been cleanly cut into different sections.
It’s unlikely that a group of journalists in Britain would ever be taken to see an animal being butchered, consumers there on the whole preferring to remain as removed as possible from the whole messy side of production. Here, it’s a measure of the pride they take in this totally natural product from the sea.
From Frialba, the tuna meat will be sold to local, national and international restaurants. Some will go to Barbate firms like Salpesca which make the famous smoked and dried tuna delicacies such as mojama.
And in the restaurants, the chefs will vie to outdo each other with innovative tuna dishes. El Campero in Barbate, for example, offers up atún with a Japanese flavour – raw sushi-style dishes served with rice pasta and soya sauce. Elsewhere, more traditional dishes like atún encebollado live on, and towns like Conil organise a week-long Ruta del Atún where visitors and locals alike can enjoy a gastro tour of local restaurants specialising in different tuna dishes.
In Barbate, there are plans to turn its almadraba fishing heritage into a tourist attraction, with a visitors’ centre and even boat trips to see the fishermen at work. But for the 600 families along the Cádiz coastline who depend on the almadraba, it’s about more than just a quaint old custom. They’ll be hoping that their famous atunes rojos won’t just end up a faded photograph on the walls of a museum.
Composite post from stories: here and here
