Tuna-throwing event goes green with fake fish

Australia’s competition to see how far someone can throw a tuna will be missing something next year: the fish.

Organisers of the Tunarama Festival held each January in Port Lincoln on the remote Eyre Peninsula are replacing the real thing with polyurethane replicas for the highlight event, the frozen tuna toss.

Each year, contestants in four categories hurl fish weighing up to 22lbs as far as they can, usually using a technique akin to an Olympic hammer thrower’s. The winner in each category gets AUS$1,000 (€600).

The fake fish have been sculpted by a locally born artist to look just like the real thing.

“The dimensions are perfect,” Merriwyne Hore, the acting manager of the 2008 festival, said. “We road-tested it with one of our champions. He had a few throws, and he was really impressed. It felt good, very balanced.”

Hore said the switch was being made for several reasons, including to avoid wasting perfectly good fish.

“What happens when the tuna is tossed, even though it’s frozen solid, it does start to break down,” Hore said. “The tail comes off, the fins come off, the eyes fall out and then the underbelly breaks, and, you know, it really gets to be extremely messy.”

Hore said some people had objected to the change, but it was judged necessary on ecological and monetary grounds.

“Some people don’t like it because it’s not original, but it’s time we got green, got realistic about this,” she said.

Farms in Port Lincoln are the main source of Australia’s tuna, including the southern blue fin species that is prized in Japan for sashimi. One good-sized tuna – known for their high-speed swimming and deep red flesh – can fetch AUS$6,000 (€3,600).