Reddit mentions of Tuna: Love, Death, and Mercury

TO THROW A TUNA, BE prepared to hold the fish by the tail and spin. That’s the way it’s done in the city of Port Lincoln in South Australia where “tuna tossing” isn’t just some unconventional salad preparation. The tuna toss is part of an annual festival called Tunarama that celebrates the town’s seafaring history—and the wealth it’s created.

If Port Lincoln is known for anything, it’s seafood. This small seaside town of 14,000 may be geographically isolated but has the largest fishing industry in the country. Reputedly, the prevalence of high value fish like southern bluefin tuna has helped the city go from a sleepy port town into a place with the highest number of millionaires per capita. Richard Ellis writes in his book, Tuna: Love, Death, and Mercury, that nearby Japan buys “the entire catch of the Port Lincoln tuna fleet”. As Japan’s demand for fatty bluefin tuna rose, so too did the income of tuna fishermen—often referred to as “tuna barons.”

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Matt Staunton, 2015 winner. (Photo: Erin Staunton)

In 1962, the town decided to create a festival at the same time of year the fishing fleet was put out to sea—on Australia Day weekend at the end of January. This being the southern hemisphere, the timing puts it right in the middle of the continent’s summer.

By 1979, festival promoters decided that the annual Tunarama needed an extra kick. Something that was flashy but also related to the town’s fishing business. At the time, the method of unloading fish from the boats was a very hands-on job. As the official Tuna Toss history states, “Men would stand on the decks of the boats, and throw tuna up onto the waiting trucks.” Hopeful fishermen were often hired on the basis of how far they could throw one of these slippery tuna that weighed an average of 20 pounds. The best got to work; the rest went home. The festival committee decided to rebrand this trial as a “local sport” and add the tuna toss to the lineup of events at Tunarama.