Tuna Poachers’ Wars

Abstract

It’s party time in General Santos City, better known as GenSan. The port at the tip of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao is celebrating its annual Tuna Festival, a kind of carnival, but all focused around tuna. It includes a colourful parade with floats displaying spectacular giant plaster and papier-mâché tuna. People sing and dance in the big festival grounds in the centre of the town, which are kitted out with fairground booths and food stalls. Everything revolves around tuna here: tuna flags, colourful, tuna-shaped hats, T-shirts depicting tuna. In the port, men sprint off the boats along terrifyingly narrow gangplanks carrying hefty yellowfin tuna on their shoulders in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record with the largest haul of tuna ever landed at a fish auction. It all culminates in a procession through the city with a prize going to the float with the most striking giant tuna (Fig. 34.1).