Tuna

Tuna are a recurring presence in the waters of the Gulf Stream, and in The Old Man and the Sea they function as both a practical resource and a symbol of the ocean's vitality. The fishermen of Havana, including Santiago, refer to all fish of the tuna species by the general name "tuna" and only distinguish them by their proper names—such as albacore or bonito—when they come to sell them or trade them for baits. This casual naming reflects the tuna's role as a common, workaday fish, valued not for its rarity but for its utility as food and bait. Santiago's relationship with the tuna is intimate and pragmatic: he catches one, eats it raw to sustain himself during his epic struggle, and uses it as the primary bait that attracts the great marlin.

The Tuna as Bait and the Hooking of the Marlin

Early on the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago rows far out into the Gulf Stream and sets his lines at precise depths. Among his baits are two fresh small tunas, or albacores, which hang on the two deepest lines like plummets. These tunas, given to him by the boy Manolin, are described as "compact and bullet shaped" with "big, unintelligent eyes" and a "neat, fast-moving tail." When Santiago catches a small albacore that weighs about ten pounds, he immediately recognizes its value as bait: "He'll make a beautiful bait," he says aloud. The tuna's firm, cold flesh is precisely what the great marlin is drawn to. One hundred fathoms down, the marlin begins to eat the sardines that cover the hook projecting from the head of the small tuna, and Santiago feels the "light delicate pulling" that signals the fish's interest. The tuna, then, is the direct cause of the marlin's hooking—the bait that sets the entire central action of the novel in motion.

The Tuna as Food and Sustenance

After hooking the marlin, Santiago must conserve his strength. He remembers the tuna he caught earlier and knows he must eat it to avoid a failure of strength. He kneels down, finds the tuna under the stern with the gaff, and cuts wedge-shaped strips of dark red meat from the back of the head to the tail. He eats the strips slowly, chewing them carefully to extract all the juices, and notes that the meat is "hard and cold and lovely" and "hardly sweet at all," unlike dolphin, which he considers too sweet. He eats all of the strips, even though he is not hungry, because he knows the tuna will give him the strength he needs. Later, when his left hand cramps, he blames the hand's weakness on the fact that he has been many hours with the fish, but he also believes that the strong, full-blooded tuna will help uncramp it. The tuna thus becomes a literal source of life—the nourishment that allows Santiago to endure the prolonged battle.

The Tuna as a Marker of Skill and Economic Reality

Santiago's ability to catch a tuna is a mark of his skill as a fisherman. He spots a school of tuna churning the water white, leaping in all directions after bait fish, and he knows that if they do not travel too fast he can get into them. He catches a straggler from the school, a small albacore, and later reflects that the tuna is a "strong full-blooded fish" and that he was lucky to get it instead of dolphin. The tuna also has economic value: Santiago thinks about the marlin's potential market price—over fifteen hundred pounds, dressed out at thirty cents a pound—and the tuna, too, would be sold or traded. The successful fishermen of the day have already butchered their marlin and carried them to the fish house to wait for the ice truck to Havana, and the tuna, like all fish, is part of this commercial cycle. Yet Santiago's relationship with the tuna is not purely economic; he respects its strength and its role in the sea's ecology, and he eats it with a sense of gratitude and necessity.

The Tuna as a Symbol of the Ocean's Abundance and the Fisherman's Code

The tuna's presence in the sea is a sign of life and possibility. When Santiago sees the school of tuna, he knows that the ocean is rich and that there may be a big fish nearby. The tuna are part of the "brotherhood of the sea" that Santiago feels with all creatures—the flying fish, the porpoises, the marlin itself. He thinks of the tuna as a "brother" in the sense that all living things are connected in the cycle of feeding and being fed. Yet the tuna is also a reminder of the fisherman's code: Santiago kills the tuna for food and bait, just as he will kill the marlin, and he does so without sentimentality but with a clear understanding of the necessity. The tuna, like the marlin, is a creature to be respected and used, and Santiago's handling of it—from the precise cut of the strips to the careful chewing of the bones—reflects his deep knowledge of the sea and its creatures. In the end, the tuna is one of the many fish that sustain Santiago, both physically and spiritually, as he proves what a man can do and what a man endures.