Neuparth, (A Pesca Maritima, Noo 2^, 1923^, List^a) examining the 

 statistics of the tuna fishery of Medo das CascaSj considers that it is 

 possible to recognize a cycle of a century in the catch of the Portuguese 

 fisheries, De Buen (Biologia del Atun, Madrid 1925) starts out from some 

 very old statistics, those of Padre SarmientOj to deny that there is any 

 periodicity whatever identifiable in the catch of the Spanish tuna 

 fisherieso 



The statistics of Padre Sarmiento do not appear to me to be worthy 

 of attention, and in any case I would not base on them conclusions contrary 

 to more recent and more reliable statisticso Apart from the suspected 

 progress of the fishery, it must be demanded how Sarmiento came to get 

 hold of the data for hundreds of years while even today we cannot succeed 

 in gathering complete statistics, and one must remain incredulous in the 

 face of the catch of 70,000 tuna taken repeatedly from a single fishery 

 (a figure which, actually, is little surpassed in certain years by all of 

 Spain, Italy, and Portugal put together )„ Probably these 70,000 tuna 

 included also some smaller fishesoooo How could a tuna trap fishery 

 take and salt down more than 1,000 fish every day? 



For my part I have tried to gather all accessible statistical 

 material, resorting even to private records and to researches in Archives. 

 The most complete statistics are theses 



Sardinia 



Fishery of Carlofortej complete data since 1825 and fragmentary earlier 

 Saline « " « 1868 « « * 



Sicily 



Favignana " » «« i878 •» •» » 



Sidi-Daud 



Medo das Cascas 

 Barril 



There are besides official Portuguese statistics from 1896, Italian 

 from 1886, and Tunisian from ■'898o 



From this examination various facts emerge which can be summarized 

 thus (see the diagram in Fig„ l)% 



a) The tuna fishery in Italy and in Tunisia has undergone a_ secular 

 fluctuation, in which in Sardinia and Sicily one can identify a peak in 

 the second half of the 18th century, a low point around 1820-1830, and a 

 new high, in which Tunisia also participated, around 1880, with a new 



12 



