The tuna fishery was born from the routes of the tuna. Today climate change is rewriting those routes and the sea asks us to protect it: the museum becomes the starting point for ideas and initiatives to defend it.
The Mediterranean Sea is warming faster than the global ocean average: it is a climate change "hot spot", a place where the effects are felt earlier and more strongly than elsewhere.
Warming is not just a matter of a few extra degrees: it changes currents, prey availability, reproductive periods and, with them, the timing and routes of the migrations that the tuna fishery economy depended on.
The Gallipoli tuna fishery existed for centuries because bluefin tuna passage was predictable: every spring the shoals crossed the Mediterranean along the same path. That predictability is the invisible link between the museum and the climate.
Bluefin tuna is not disappearing: it is changing home. And with it, the balance of the entire Mediterranean is shifting.
An international study led by AZTI analysed how rising ocean temperatures are changing, and will continue to change, the feeding and spawning areas of bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus).
Projections indicate that the Mediterranean will progressively lose quality as a spawning habitat, while waters at higher latitudes — Northern Europe, the north-eastern Atlantic, Greenland — become increasingly favourable. True "climate refugia" are forming where tuna and their prey find optimal conditions.
The risk is not only biological but also managerial: a species on the move is harder to govern with tools designed for a sea that is no longer what it used to be.
From the museum's memory
For centuries the tonnara intercepted tuna in spring along the Ionian coast of Salento. Today the museum tells not only a past of nets and mattanza: it also tells the question that climate change poses about the future of the sea. See the migratory route and the timeline.
Conceptual diagram of bluefin tuna migration — illustrative example, not a scientific chart.
Thermal stress is compounded by pollution. Every year millions of tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans: waste that fragments into microplastics, enters the food chain and reaches our tables.
Then there are ghost nets — lost fishing gear that keeps "fishing" for years without control — and the contaminants that build up in top predators such as tuna. Protecting the sea means protecting the communities that have lived from it for centuries.
An annual scholarship open to everyone with a sensible idea for cleaning the sea from pollution. The best ideas are presented and awarded at the museum, which becomes the meeting point and starting point of initiatives for the defence of the sea.
Students aged 14 to 19, also as groups or classes: a concrete and feasible idea, presented as a short submission. The winning project receives a scholarship and is hosted in an exhibition at the museum.
Anyone with a concrete solution to prevent or remove pollution: technologies, services, citizen science actions. Winners receive a contribution to develop the idea, a mentoring path and the chance to present it at a public day at the museum.
How it works: applications open in spring, the jury (museum scientific committee, scholars and partners) reviews submissions in summer, and the award ceremony takes place during the Day of the Sea in autumn, at the museum.
Openness: submitted ideas, with the authors' consent, will be published in an open, machine-readable format (CC0), consistent with the project's data catalogue philosophy.
Initiative in preparation: the call is not open yet. Rules, prize and deadlines will be published on this page.
Write to us at info@tonnaragallipoli.it: we will let you know when the call opens. You can also use this address to propose a partnership as a school, institution or sponsor.
The museum is not only the guardian of the past: it is the place where the community, schools and researchers meet to think about and act for the sea.
An annual event at the museum: the Scholarship award ceremony, meetings with researchers and associations, stories from those who live at sea every day. The moment when the ideas presented during the year become a public heritage.
Educational paths on the link between the history of the tuna fishery, climate and pollution: from the tuna routes of the past to today's challenges, to train the sea guardians of tomorrow.
The idea of building a network between the Mediterranean tuna fishery museums: sharing archives, experiences and common initiatives for the protection of the sea and its traditions.
Whether you are a school, an association, a scientific body or a citizen with an idea: the museum is open to proposals. Tell us about your initiative on the Get Involved page.