Paper Short Abstract:

The paper “Tuna Troubles” asks how the development of fish ranches and farms make and unmake Atlantic bluefin tuna and what this does and undoes to this "torpedo from the ocean depths" and its relationship with space, water, and time.

Paper Abstract:

In its contribution to the “Claiming the sea, seaing anthropology” panel, I propose to present a view from a tuna ranch, which is another way to say cage, off of the coast of Malta and submerged by the Mediterranean Sea. This “sea view” takes a deep breath to bob above and then snorkel below the surface of the water, to swim clockwise in the company of Atlantic bluefin, to hitch a ride on what feels like an underwater merry-go-round that rewrites the song “Hotel California” for the Anthropocene. The lyrics jumble. Instead of champagne on ice, there is tuna frozen in such a flash that it still counts as fresh, but the same doubts remain—about what is heaven versus hell, about steely knives and the master’s chambers, about checking-out without being able to leave. Doubts that become questions about the multiple meanings of more-than-human mobilities and how profit-driven practices like tuna ranching try to tether bluefin to one place while conservation-conscious regulations that follow the meridian 45° west attempt to adhere to a line that fish and currents and water alike all ignore. In dialogue with how the logics of capture that fuel contemporary ocean grabs adapt colonialism’s script to water, “Tuna Troubles” weaves together an intimate study of tuna—what Pablo Neruda calls a “torpedo from the ocean depths, a missile that swam”—with scholarship about how regulations make and unmake, do and undo fish and their relationships with water (Probyn 2016; Telesca 2020; Pinchen 2023).