Mattanza

A centuries-old tradition, the Egadi Islands’ mattanza (ritual tuna slaughter) survives despite the ever-decreasing number of tuna fish swimming into the local waters each year. Schools of tuna have, for centuries, used the waters around western Sicily as a mating ground. Locals can recall the golden days of the island’s fishing industry, when it was not uncommon to catch giant breeding tuna of between 200kg and 300kg - and even the odd 500kg freak. Fish that size are rare these days and the annual catch is increasingly smaller, due to the worldwide overfishing of tuna.

Now that the slaughter of tuna can no longer support the island’s economy, it is reinventing itself as a tourist attraction. From around 20 May to 10 June you might witness the event and join the fishers in their boats and watch them catching the tuna at close hand - you will need a strong stomach though. This is no ordinary fishing expedition: the fishers organise their boats and nets in a complex formation designed to channel the tuna into a series of enclosures which culminate in the camera della morte (chambers of death). Once enough tuna are imprisoned, the fishers close in and the mattanza begins (the word is derived from the Spanish word for killing). It is a bloody affair - up to eight or more fishermen at a time will sink huge hooks into a (sometimes enormous) tuna and drag it aboard. Anyone who has seen Rossellini’s classic film Stromboli will no doubt recall the famous mattanza scene.

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