“Tonnare di Ritorno” Itinerary

Before speaking about the Tonnare, we have to clarify their history and the migration of tuna. In the Mediterranean Sea we find different species of tuna, like: albacore, little tuna and the famous bluefin tuna. The last one does two migrations every year, during spring it enters from the Atlantic Ocean in the Mediterranean Sea through the Strict of Gibraltar to fertilize its eggs (“bottarga”), just because the the level of saltiness and the temperature of water are perfect for this. At the end of the summer it does the same migration, but back to front from the Mediterranean Sea to the cold water of the Atlantic Ocean. Tuna has done this kind of migration for centuries now, so ever since the phoenicians and the greeks man has invented the Tonnara. In Sicily we can distinguish “Tonnare di andata” and “Tonnare di ritorno”. The “Tonnare di andata” that are situated in the north of Sicily (Favignana, San Vito lo Capo and so on) catched all the tuna that came from the Atlantic Ocean in between May and July. This tuna was called “tonno di andata”, which was very slow because it had to fertilize its eggs, more fat and full of “bottarga”. On June 12th, during Sant’Antonio day, the old “tonnaroti” (tuna fishermen) said that the tuna “rolled its eyes” (“furriava lu occhiu”): it meant that tuna migration made its last stop in the South-East of Sicily going through Messina, and it was called “tonno di ritorno” because then it went back to the Atlantic Ocean from the end of June to the end of August.

All of the “Tonnare di ritorno” are located in the south-east of Sicily. With “Tonnara” we mean basically two things: the nets that were put into the sea for 3 months and the buildings in the land. In the “tonnare di ritorno” the net was put underwater in June. They were constituted by three chambers 1 mile away from the coast: the big chamber, the small chamber and the chamber of death. The first two chambers were useful so that tuna got used to the tight space of the nets, while in the last one the nets catched the tuna. A “pedal” was attached to the chamber of death, it was a great net anchored to the sea bottom that stayed at the surface thanks to some pieces of cork. The tuna, that came from the north to Marzamemi, followed this pedal because it believed it was the coast, also because it has a lacking eyesight. Following the pedal, it entered the big chamber and the small chamber and then, making some swirling rotations, it entered the chamber of death.

Here we find the “scieri”, which are 20mt long boats. They were called “scieri capo rais” where there was the “rais”, the chief of the slaughter, and “scieri di levata” where there was the fishermen that had to pull up the nets. When the rais looked at the chamber of death and realized that there was a lot of tuna, he said “levata!”. To that scream, the fishermen in the “scieri di levata” begun to pull up the nets while singing a song that was called “Cialoma”, so that all of them followed the same rhythm. The tunas were then harpooned, put on the boats and the fishermen used some flags to communicate the number of fish that they had fished. Once in the “tonnara” (in the land), the tuna was delivered to another building called “camperia”, hanger or wood, it was butched, the head was cut off and it was hung up so that it could bleed. All of the innards were dried out; tuna is in fact called “the pork of the ocean” because no parts are thrown away. In the past tuna was just cut into pieces and put into barrels of “tunnina” (tuna barrels), but then it was also boiled and conserves in oil.