Quietly, a local company with generational ties to the once-dominant tuna industry is rebuilding a business. It’s been a slow process. But restaurant by restaurant and one store chain after another, San Diego’s American Tuna is staking a claim in the market.
Heading into the 1970s, San Diego was considered the Tuna Capital of the World. It was the city’s third largest industry, and employed or was tied to the jobs of about 40,000 people. Government regulation aimed at making tuna net fishing safe for the schools of dolphins that swam with the tuna helped strangle the business.
The San Diego Historical Society reports that in 1980 there were still 100 tuna boats in San Diego. By 1990, though, the fleet had dwindled to about 30. When companies like Starkist, Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea pulled up stakes and moved overseas, it took about two years for the number of boats to drop to a mere eight.
Six years ago, some local fishing families banded together and formed American Tuna. Between the Blockers, Nishes, Diehls, Websters and father and son Hawkinses, the company has five boats, docked at downtown’s G Street Mole and Driscoll’s Wharf on Harbor Island.
American Tuna is the only company certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as a “sustainable commercial tuna fishery.” That’s because American Tuna fishes by the traditional “pole and troll” process. Rather
"Pole and troll" fishing.
Courtesy of American Tuna.
than use large nets, boats chum the water and fishermen actively use specialized poles with lures that attract tuna. Barb-less hooks on the poles allow fishermen to catch fish and instantaneously hurl them onto the boat.
“San Diego has tourism now, but back in older days, when fishing left, it left a vacuum,” says Natalie Webster, co-owner, family member and director of operations for Bonita-based American Tuna. “There were many Portuguese and Italian fishing families that were decimated.”
Webster knows the glory days of tuna fishing in San Diego are gone for good—especially with the biggest canners now located in Thailand. But she hopes American Tuna can be a model for sustainability for the industry. “The method you use to harvest is in direct correlation to the resource, the tuna,” she says. “There needs to be a long-term management plan that incorporates sustainability.” Regulation and accountability outside the U.S. is wanting, she says.
Webster also points to the nonsensical reality that most of the tuna caught by United States companies is shipped overseas, and most of what Americans eat is caught somewhere else. A can of American Tuna, considered high-end, especially to demanding palates in countries like Spain, costs $4.99. The cheaper cans that come from places like Thailand, says Webster, are $1.99, and contain less tuna and are commonly packed in water.
Through grassroots marketing efforts, American Tuna is now in Whole Foods Markets across the country, and several specialty food stores nationwide. In San Diego, the company is in Point Loma Seafood, and bought by restaurants like George’s at the Cove, Bay Park Fish Co., Urban Mo’s, Sea Rocket Bistro and is getting a test at the Fish Market in Del Mar.
American Tuna recently teamed with Point Loma’s Ballast Point Brewing Company to do a tuna-and-beer pairing dinner at Sea Rocket Bistro. A sell-out crowd tasted tuna-imbued Nicoise salad, tuna melts and seared albacore loin. The dinner was a bona fide hit.
American Tuna will keep working on expansion plans. It’s a challenge. The company is a whisper of what the local industry once was. But it’s the logical blueprint of an environmentally conscious game plan for tuna interests worldwide.
Webster adds one final call to action: “At your next restaurant, ask them where their fish come from, and how they were harvested. If enough people ask, it can affect the buyers. Consumers do have power.”
