The journey of red tuna

(see part one)

Nine large round nets accommodate in a sort of submarine zoo something like 6 thousand red tuna: the show you can enjoy in Amettla de Mar, Cataluña, at the end of the fishing season – at the beginning of July – is unique (you can see it closer thanks to the Tuna tour, and even enjoy the view of the darting fish). This is the Balfegó kingdom, that of the only company in the world that all year round supplies the most important restaurants with fresh Thunnus thynnus (in Italy their exclusive importer is Longino & Cardenal).

We have told you how these 6 thousand “pigs of the sea” (70% of their body is made of belly and fillets, that is to say precious meat. And even the rest is not really thrown away) are captured: there’s no killing, no freezing, once caught in the nets they continue to swim – semi-freely – until a restaurant, somewhere across the world, orders a supply. Only then they are sacrificed, that is to say after a few months spent in the Catalan sea, with a total control of their diet, of their body mass, of the fat content and of their health: an extremely fresh product and of the highest guaranteed quality will arrive to the client’s. This is a high quality processing that requires extraordinary artisanal skills, applied to a precious and thus valuable raw material (a whole tuna, weighing 180 kilos on average, costs around 12 thousand euros. On the day of our visit to Amettla they sacrificed 30 specimen, in other seasons – in autumn and winter, when fishing tuna is forbidden – up to 70 are killed per day: you can do the maths yourself and find out their daily revenue).

As mentioned, after catching the tuna South of the Balearic archipelago, the fish spends at least six or seven months in the nets anchored 2,5 miles away from the port of Amettla: caught after the migration and the laying of the eggs, they are bowing down from the long journey and thus need to “rest” and be nurtured abundantly with blue tailed fish (mackerel, sardines, herrings: last year alone, they ate 9 million kilos of these). This fish is frozen and controlled, so as to rule out any risk of anisakis, a parasite very harmful to man (there hasn’t been a single case in 30 years of Balfegó’s activity and in fact they are trying to obtain an official acknowledgement of being “anisakis free”).

In the great nets, each one of which can hold up to 2 thousand specimen, the fat percentage of the tuna increases by one fifth in comparison to the moment in which the fish is caught: this means it can be between 5 to 12% of the body mass. When an order arrives, a scuba diver goes into the nets and selects the most suitable fish to satisfy the client’s request: it is sacrificed, lifted straight away on board of a ship where the evisceration procedure starts and continues, half an hour later, in Balfegó’s factory. A section of the caudal fin is taken to determine the fat percentage and the health of the specimen.

If the fish passes these controls, the master artisans section the various parts using large machetes, with curt samurai-style cuts, so that a few minutes later what was ordered can be shipped to anywhere in the world, in polystyrene boxes and covered in ice. Counting 48 hours for the hanging of the meat, in 4 days some very fresh and controlled meat of the best possible red tuna in the world arrives to the client’s, anywhere in the world, without being frozen. A perfect system.

(2. fine)