The Tuna ‘Commodity Frontier’: Business Strategies and Environment in the Industrial Tuna Fisheries of the Western Indian Ocean

Abstract

An industrial fishery is a geographical area of operation of a complex of capitals whose form of organization is the firm and whose medium of operation is fishing vessels.Tuna fisheries from the Bay of Biscay (1860s) to the Eastern Tropical Atlantic (1950s) and the Western Indian Ocean (1980s). The primary empirical focus is the Indian Ocean, where, after appropriating an initial, highly productive surplus, the European fleet intensified fishing activities and has partially undermined the natural conditions for the reproduction of its industrial-scale operations. I argue that the complex dynamics of capture fisheries can be better understood through the prism of a commodity frontier.Keywords: canned tuna, purse-seine fisheries, European Union (EU), Western Indian Ocean, commodity frontier, commodity chain INTRODUCTION Tuna fisheries are among the most highly capitalized and valuable fisheries in the world.While tuna sashimi and sushi are emblematic of the Japanese culture of consumption (Bestor 2004), it is less well known that the humble can of tuna is one of the most widely consumed forms of seafood in the United States (US), Spain, Italy, France, the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany. The US-and EU-centred canned tuna commodity chains each supply multi-billion dollar mass markets. Industrial fishing fleets provide the vast majority of raw material for canning. I define an industrial fishery as a geographical area of operation of a complex of capitals whose form of organization is the firm and whose medium of operation is fishing vessels. But the 'business of fishing' is not to be understood as an isolate. Tuna fishing firms are Liam Campling, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK. E-mail: l.campling@qmul.ac.uk I would like to express especial gratitude to Gavin Capps, Elizabeth Havice, Penny Howard and Jason Moore for their extensive contributions to various drafts of this paper. I also offer many thanks to Elena Baglioni, Henry Bernstein, Alain Fonteneau, Patrice Guillotreau, Satoshi Miyamura, Jon Pattenden, John Pearce, Ben Selwyn and two anonymous peer reviewers for comments on earlier drafts. The PhD research on which this paper is based owes thanks to many other people. All mistakes remain my own. I also acknowledge the financial support provided by a SOAS Research Student Fellowship.

Second-guessing uncertainty: Scenario planning for management of the Indian Ocean tuna purse seine fishery

“…Appetite for tuna is particularly strong in Europe, and the EU is one of the largest markets for canned tuna in the world, split between 5 principal consumers: Spain, Italy, the UK, France and Germany (FAO [18]). Premium-quality yellowfin tuna, canned in olive oil, is favoured by the southern European market, especially Italy and Spain, whereas lower-value skipjack tuna, canned in brine or vegetable oil, is preferred in the northern European market, especially the UK and Germany [7]. Both of these commodities are produced using tunas caught in the Indian Ocean purse seine fishery, which are landed in the Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar and processed in local canneries, or transshipped and sent to canneries in Europe, Asia and South America for processing [38].…”

“…Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s French and Spanish fishing companies invested in larger purse seine vessels, at an estimated cost of US$20 million per vessel, which offered numerous commercial advantages including the ability to make extended fishing trips with larger fish-wells [7]. However, because larger vessels are more sensitive to increasing operating costs (e.g.…”

“…circa 15-20,000 t; Fonteneau, personal communication). Consequently, purse seine firms have become increasing reliant on the use of FADs to achieve the very large catches needed to remain profitable [24,7].…”

Governing in a placeless environment: Sustainability and fish aggregating devices

“…Like many multilateral regimes, the RFMO system is constrained within the rights and interests of its member states (Cullis-Suzuki and Pauly, 2010). It is also constrained by weak control over private networks and flows in areas beyond national jurisdiction (Campling, 2012). Calls for greater transparency around private FAD information from fishing companies remains ineffective because of the limits of state jurisdiction in the high seas, making disclosure voluntary.…”

“…The governance of sustainable archipelagic FAD use can only be analysed and designed if the combined influence of national and transnational (fishing/processing/trading, regulatory and ecological) networks and (capital, information, vessel and fish) flows are understood and taken into account. The regional and even global spatiality of capital flows and social relations of production, technology and regulatory systems, as well as international trading and processing systems into which tuna are traded have a direct influence over decisions on how these FADs are used (Campling, 2012;Campling et al, 2012). Likewise, the lack of identity and sense of place attached to these anchored FADs, because of the corporatist ownership structures surrounding them, make sustainability governance less a matter of local place-based structures and more a matter of (trans)national governance arrangements stretching over larger spaces.…”