Tuna Fish

The tuna has a sort of keel that enables it to make fast turns when hunting for small fish and squids. The biggest and strongest of the tuna fish is the Albacore and ¾ of its weight is made up of muscles, so well provided with blood that its body temperature is always higher than the temperature of the water, which is quite rare among fish. The albacore swims in shoals of 25 fish.

The first historic reference to tuna fishing in our country goes back to the year 151 of our times, in the current territory of Algarve. Among the countless fish traps, the Armação Medo das Cascas, close to Tavira, managed to catch, in one single year, about 41 000 tunas.

The Arraial Ferreira Neto trap was the last one to be inaugurated, in 1945, successor of the Medo das Cascas trap, destroyed by the sea in 1941, as a result of the constant displacement of the bars. The Abóbora Trap, located on the island that is known as Cabanas, met with a similar fate in the beginning of the 60’s.