Written by Jeremy Brown, Fisherman, Slow Food member and 2008 Terra Madre delegate
Albacore, Thunnus Alolonga, are the only tuna that can be sold as “white meat’. In many ways the polar opposite of the Bluefin beloved of the sushi trade and poster fish for fisheries run wild. Albacore’s ecological niche is on the fringes- they swim further, faster deeper and more scattered into cooler waters than most tunas. This makes them less vulnerable to fishing pressure, and particularly hard to catch on an industrial scale.
Older fish swim deeper in more tropical water and are principally caught on pelagic longline gear, younger fish frequent the surface waters along the sub tropical convergence zones of the world’s oceans which is where they can be caught by jigs trolled on the surface or chummed up with bait in the classic pole-and-line fisheries.
