A tuna being tossed at the annual Tunarama Festival, Australia.Australia's competition to see how far someone can throw a tuna is going green next year. Organizers 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 10 kilograms as far as they can, usually using a technique akin to an Olympic hammer thrower's. The winner in each category receives $1,000 Australian ($890).
Tuna tossing is the highlight of the annual social calendar in Port Lincoln where fishermen who have grown rich from catching the prized fish and exporting them to Japan for high quality sushi and sashimi.
One good-sized tuna — known for their high-speed swimming and deep red flesh — can fetch more than $5,000. A local artist has sculpted the fake fish to look just like the real thing. "The dimensions are perfect," said Ms. Merriwyne Hore, the acting manager of the 2008 festival.
Some locals are unhappy that the real fish would no longer be thrown.
It is not clear why after the toss, the parts of a real fish cannot be eaten, by humans or by animals. What can't be eaten can be composted. How is it "greener" to use polyurethane which will eventually end up in a landfill is also not clear.
Although the organisers of this contest have to cave in to pressure from the environmentalists fighting against the depleting tuna stock, the locals can still enjoy the camaraderie of the event with a look-alike tuna.
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