Egadi Islands (Part 5) Favignana Tuna Canning Factory

The Favignana tuna canning factory 

We’d walked past the factory, seen it from the top of the nearby hill and checked the opening times, and so we were there, on the doorstep, when it opened on 7 June. We bought our tickets and then sat around for 30 minutes in the courtyard whilst another 20 visitors arrived plus a large party of teenage Italian school children. We had expected to just wander around the factory on our own but it was clear that it would be a guided tour and, because there are very few foreign tourists, it would be all be in Italian. We stuck with it and it turned out to be a very worthwhile visit. Our tour guide spoke almost solidly for 2 hours but in between her set pieces in Italian we were able to ask enough questions (in English and answered in English!) to fill in the gaps. Also, very typically of the helpfulness we’d experienced in Sicily, the school teacher did his best to add a few extra nuggets of information about what was being explained by the guide.

Catching tuna in the Egadi Islands dates back to ancient times, indeed possibly even to the Phoenicians, although, it was not until the islands came under Arab domination that the most fundamental elements of the “rite” that underpin the fishing practises of the 20^th century were firmly established. The complex and ritual method of catching tuna fish follows – or rather used to follow – very precise rules, timings and strictly disciplined practices established by the Rais, the head of the tuna fishermen and, at one time also the head of the village: a sort of shaman who specified when it should begin and what procedure should be followed.

Model of the nets (left). Weights and floats (upper right) and anchors to secure them (bottom right)    

We saw models of the nets used and diagrams (pictured left) of how they were laid. Given that Favignana Island is 5 miles wide we think that the nets stretched out up to 7 miles. It must have been a huge task to maintain and set them up each year.

Rowing boats used to lay the nets and catch and recover the tuna    

The boats that they used to lay the nets and to catch the tuna are still housed in the large boathouses. They are huge, heavy wooden boats powered by oars and with sufficient space to bring back the catch of monster tuna.

The long nets funnelling the tuna into the camera della morte   

It all happened in late spring (April – June) when the tuna collect in great shoals off the west coast of Sicily where the conditions are perfect for breeding. The fishing boats laid the enormous nets out to funnel the fish into a long net corridor leading to a captive area. In this captive area, barrier nets were raised to coral as many tuna as possible into chambers but not enough to risk damaging the nets if they all tried to flee in one direction at once. Using these barrier nets, the fish were worked along the line of the corridor until finally, they were fed into an area with much tougher netting, the camera della morte. When an appropriate number of fish are deemed to be trapped in the chamber, the Rais ordered the mattanza (the massacre) to begin.

La mattanza   

Boats were positioned around the camera della morte and the extra strong netting in this part of the trap was hauled in by hand. With less and less sea to swim in, the tuna panicked and tried vainly to find an escape turning the sea into a froth of foam. Crowded together, the exhausted fish were speared or hooked and heaved aboard the boats before being transported to the nearby canning factory.

Landing and ‘bleeding’ area of the factory   

We saw the landing and ‘bleeding’ area of the factory. The photographs showed how the tuna were craned off the boats, decapitated and bled, before they being cut up and cooked. Tuna are warm blooded creatures and the bleeding process is important to get the best flavour in the cooked meat.

The cooking area   

Right next to the landing and ‘bleeding’ area are the brick chimneys and furnaces for the cooking area. A line of 20 huge bronze pans sat over an industrial-sized wood oven, the water in the pans being kept at a constant simmer for poaching the fish meat. Photographs showed the cooks (with obligatory cigarettes hanging from the corner of their mouths) scooping out the cooked tuna meat and moving it into trays ready to be passed onto the canning area.

The canning area   

We stood in the canning hall looking at the same stone tables pictured around us showing the final stages of the canning process. This was women’s work; all of the other photographs showed men at work, but here it was almost exclusively women. The cooked meat was shaped and packed into the open topped tins, topped up with olive oil or brine, before having the top of the can crimped on.

The scale of the operation was impressive. Our guide explained that the village essentially worked catching and tinning tuna for just 3 months of the year but that was so lucrative that it sustained the islands’ economies for the rest of the year. We saw stone commemorative plaques recording the largest annual catches, the greatest of which was in 1859 when they landed an incredible 10,159 tonnes of tuna; that would have been a very busy 3 months of canning work! Perhaps also most surprising is that the factory was still in use until 2007; it looked like it had been shut down years before that. From what we read there have been a few more mattanzas in the waters around the islands since then, the last (we think) being in 2014 but bluefin tuna are now classified as an endangered species by the EU and so the tuna canning industry in Sicily has switched its efforts to catching the apparently sustainable yellowfin tuna.

Egadi Islands, Sicily, Italy