Hemingway’s Tuna

“Fish,” he said, “I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Though a more recent example of the hidden histories of food in scientific archives, Ernest Hemingway’s tuna distills several themes of early modern scientific collecting and consumption. In October 1934, the author sent this albacore tuna specimen, its body cavity filled with salt as a preservative, to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. With it, he included a culinary caveat, writing: “If you don’t want him as a specimen and he gets there in good shape wash the salt out, cut the meat off both sides of the back bone and broil it. Or cut the head off, make scores in the side of the fish and bake it.” Henry W. Fowler, an American ichthyologist and first curator of the Academy’s fish collection, responded to Hemingway’s letter with gratitude: “very glad to have this specimen.”

Hemingway’s albacore tuna was the first fresh specimen of its kind Fowler had examined from the Eastern Atlantic. These animals are remarkable for their sabre-like pectoral fin, more elongated in this species than in any other tuna or mackerel. The specimen still shows traces of the dark purple tints and “opalescent” flanks described by Hemingway in his letter to Fowler. While the author humbly offered a recipe to ensure the fish would not go to waste if rejected as a specimen, the Academy embraced the tuna—not because it was a large and impressive catch, but because they hadn’t received one of such small a size. The specimen also likely lives on in a scientific collection, rather than fleetingly in Fowler’s stomach, thanks to the celebrity of its catcher. And yet, Hemingway’s backup recipe suggests how scientific specimens often carried the potential to transform into food.

While Fowler engaged in some collecting himself, he relied heavily on obtaining fishes from correspondents around the world, perhaps most famous among them being Hemingway. Fowler had spent six weeks with Hemingway during the summer of 1934 aboard the writer’s boat, the Pilar, searching for marlin, sailfish, dolphin, and shark. Hemingway’s passion for fishing surfaced in a 1934 Esquire article, in which he lamented the lack of adequate funding for the scientific study of billfishes, posed questions about their biology, and put forth his own explanations. Hemingway continued to provide the Academy with more information from subsequent fishing excursions, allowing Fowler to clarify and further scientific knowledge of many North Atlantic game fishes. To show his appreciation of Hemingway’s time and knowledge, Fowler dedicated a new species of fish to the author in 1935: Neomerinthe hemingwayi, known commonly as the spinycheek scorpionfish.

Fowler’s relationship with Hemingway represents a more general approach that many early modern naturalists likewise undertook to gather information—one that capitalized on various food ecologies. Fowler would often consult fish markets or fishers themselves to locate specimens, instructing his potential collectors that they should “get [as] many species as possible” and “visit markets as often as possible and examine as much material as may seem desirable.” In addition, stomach contents of large fishes, which can contain specimens of smaller species, were also very desirable both in Fowler’s day and in the eighteenth century, as early modern scientific manuals instructed collectors to open the stomachs of sharks and the like to find further curious specimens. These continuities have persisted over time, and even today, ichthyologists often befriend fishers to obtain specimens for their collections. Hemingway himself also relied on the knowledge and expertise of a local fisherman. In Cuba, Hemingway’s friend and hired aid Carlos Gutiérrez taught Hemingway how to fish for marlin at different depths. He chronicled his experiences with Gutiérrez in writings such as the 1933 Esquire article “Marlin off the Morro: A Cuban letter,” and Gutiérrez helped inspire the character of Santiago, the protagonist of Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea.

While fishing functioned largely as a hobby for Hemingway, for many others, fishing today is a means of survival—but one bearing rather uncomfortable resonances with the early modern period. In 2014, The Guardian, The New York Times, and the Associated Press exposed controversial practices resembling slave labor among migrant workers in Taiwan’s fisheries, which export tuna consumed in Europe and North America. One fisher reported, “We only got to sleep for five hours if and when we caught some fish. If we didn’t catch anything, we’d just have to keep working, even for 34 hours straight.” Albacore tuna is a common finding for the migrants in Taiwan who labor in fisheries controlled by companies like Fong Chun Formosa—one of the world’s largest suppliers of tuna and, according to a recent Greenpeace East Asia investigation, a seller with possible links to “modern slavery and environmental destruction.” The albacore tuna, an edible fish that Ernest Hemingway transformed into a specimen, is today widely consumed on the backs and labor of individuals working in slave-like conditions on the other side of the world.

Image: Albacore Tuna (Thunnus alalunga), Ichthyology Collection, The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (ANSP 25796). Photograph by Mark Sabaj Pérez.

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This article was written by Fatema Begum. For more information about her work and her other contributions to The Kitchen in the Cabinet click here.

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References

Academy Archives Coll. 117E (2–12). Box 3, File 2, Page 3.

Fowler, Henry to Ernest Hemingway. October 15, 1934. Archives of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Collection 220.

Hemingway, Ernest to Henry W. Fowler. October 9, 1934. Archives of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Collection 220.

Hemingway, Ernest. “Marlin off the Morro: A Cuban Letter.” Esquire. September 1, 1933.

Marschke, Melissa and Peter Vandergeest. “Slavery Scandals: Unpacking Labour Challenges and Policy Responses within the off-Shore Fisheries Sector.” Marine Policy 68 (2016): 39–46.

Pfleger, Paige. “How Fish Meant for Market Might End Up in a Museum.” Atlas Obscura. June 12, 2018. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fish-from-market-to-museum.

Smith-Vaniz, William F. and Robert McCracken Peck. “Contributions of Henry Weed Fowler (1878–1965), with a Brief Early History of Ichthyology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.” Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 143 (1991): 173–91.

Wheeler, Perry. “Bumble Bee Foods’ New Owner Shows Potential Connections to Modern Slavery and Illegal Fishing Practices.” Greenpeace USA, March 19, 2020. https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/bumble-bee-foods-new-owner-shows-potential-connections-to-modern-slavery-and-illegal-fishing-practices/#:~:text=Issues-,Bumble%20Bee%20Foods’%20new%20owner%20shows%20potential%20connections%20to,slavery%20and%20illegal%20fishing%20practices&text=Washington%2C%20DC%20%E2%80%93%20Bumble%20Bee%20Foods,new%20Greenpeace%20East%20Asia%20investigation.