MapisM
Well-Known Member
It is actually typical of both Sardinia and Sicily. There's another one in Favignana, frinstance.never heard of these tonnara, is it typical around sardegna, or are there other places in the med where you can see this ?
Have seen large groups of tuna's and sharks in Maldives and Palau, but only a few hundreds not thousends
but usually somewhere around a reef, so not really in the bleu unless the scenery was too exiting so that we lost vieuw with the reef....
But overall, they're extremely rare nowadays, maybe 3 or 4 of them overall, because tuna fishing is now more efficiently handled by huge fishing vessels. Which btw should be banned by EU regulations, in the near future.
It's not easy to explain what a tonnara is, but in a nutshell it's an area in the open sea enclosed by huge nets. The longer part, which forces the fishes to deviate towards the "chambers", is roughly 1000m long. The chambers area, where the fishes are trapped (and where you can dive and swim with them) is roughly 500m long and 50m wide.
Below are a couple of pics showing a model of a tonnara.
And yes, at times up to a couple of thousands bluefin tunas can be trapped in these nets. Considering also that these animals can reach a lenght of 3 meters and a weight of 700kg, you can guess how impressive the dive is!
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