Tuna Wars, 1st ed. 2019
Powers Around the Fish We Love to Conserve

Historically, whenever tuna was hauled ashore, the sounds of battle were never far away. ?Tuna Wars? tells the untold story of the power struggles emerging around tuna, from the distant past to your present-day dinner table.

In the ancient past, the giant tuna was the first fish to become the basis of a large-scale industry and a ?global? trade that created fortunes: Hannibal was able to finance his elephant campaign on Rome thanks to tuna. From the Middle Ages on, a tuna fishing monopoly on Spain?s southern coast allowed the nobility to completely dominate the area and even lead the ?invincible? Armada. When the markets for tuna increased exponentially thanks to technical advances, tuna eventually became a billion-dollar business and one of the most-consumed fish species worldwide.

But this massive expansion came at a price. An 18th century monk in Madrid was the first to warn that tuna fisheries needed to be run sustainably for the sake of future generations. Andthe issue of sustainability would go on to become a game-changer in the modern tuna wars, characterized by new alliances and partnerships, hybrid warfare and commercial power struggles.

In addition to accompanying you through the history of tuna and sharing insights into fisheries science and approaches to sustainably managing fisheries, Tuna Wars offers practical guidance on choosing sustainably fished tuna. In short, it will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about tuna, but were afraid to ask. 

Introduction: The Tuna Trail.- Part I. The Dawn of Giant Tuna.- Chapter 1.The Cave.- Chapter 2. The Purple Folk’s Tuna.- Chapter 3. Three Classic Tuna Wars.- Chapter 4. Thunnus Nostrum.- Chapter 5. Tuna Renaissance.- Chapter 6. The Great Tuna Conqueror.- Chapter 7. The Tuna Dukes.- Chapter 8. The Tuna Saint of Sustainability.- Part II. The Modern Tuna Era.- Chapter 9. The Rise of the Can.- Chapter 10. The Tuna Machine.- Chapter 11. Tuna Mapping.- Chapter 12. The mystery of the North Sea bluefin Tuna.- Chapter 13. The Almadraba Revisted.- Chapter 14. Tokyo’s Pantry.- Chapter 15. Gurumu Bumu.- Chapter 16. The Fall.- Part III. The Fina Tuna Trap.- Chapter 17. Tuna Requiem.- Chapter 18. The Battle of Science.- Chapter 19. Tuna Wild West.- Chapter 20. Tokyo’s Tuna Fort.- Chapter 21. The Tuna Police.- Chapter 22. Caged Tuna.- Chapter 23. Tuna Welfare.- Chapter 24. Tiger of the Sea.- Chapter 25. Tuna Deus ex Machina.- Part IV. The Tuna Challenge .- Chapter 26. Twenty-first Century Tuna Wars.- Chapter 27. Wicked Tuna problems.- Chapter 28. The Tuna Family.- Chapter 29. Fishing Gears.- Chapter 30. The State of Sustainable Tuna.- Chapter 31. Making Invisible Tuna Visible.- Chapter 32. Eco-labels for Sustainable Tuna.- Chapter 33. Tuna Poacher’s Wars.- Chapter 34. The Pacific Tuna War.- Chapter 35. The Tuna Production Cartel.- Chapter 36. Three Flipper Wars.- Chapter 37. Tuna Conspiracies.- Chapter 38. Pirate Wars.- Chapter 39. The End of the Trail, the Beginning of a New Tuna Era.

Steven Adolf (1959) is a researcher, writer and journalist based in the Netherlands. He worked as an editor and correspondent in Spain, Portugal and Morocco for the Dutch daily papers Het Financieele Dagblad, De Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad, the Dutch weekly magazine Elsevier, and the Belgian newspapers De Morgen and The Standard. He is the author of bestselling country portraits of Spain and Morocco and a book on Spanish immigration in the Netherlands. As a researching economist he is currently involved in a project on sustainable tuna fisheries at Wageningen University.