It's All About the Tuna at this Fish Market in the Maldives

The fish market in Male, the uber-congested capital city of the Maldives, is full of limbless cold-blooded vertebrates: groupers, sea bass, red snappers, dolphin fish, barracuda. But at the end of the day, it's all about the tuna.

Yellowfin and skipjack are two tuna species commonly caught in the Indian Ocean, and they are sold and filleted on the slippery-floored Male fish market. They are hooked not with the monstrous purse-seine nets used elsewhere in today's mega-exploitative, Jungle-esque international fishing industry, but by hook-and-pole method, where fishermen rely on brawn and good old-fashioned luck in hooking tuna; less Sinclair than Hemingway. With a dozen or more men, boats will stay out at sea for up to a month. At the market, tuna buyers barter with merchants, clutching fists of orange and green rufiyaa bills and hoping for a good deal. Both restauranteurs and regular consumers buy their tuna there. The biggest tuna catches are sold to the canneries, which dice and can the monster fish for export and local sale.

Yellowfin tuna stored in a floating purgatory between the fishing boats and the Male fish market.

A former administrator for the Maldivian army, Hassan Sujaa, 35, a deckhand aboard the

Laaza

, has been on the job for three years.

Deckhands aboard the

Laaza

fishing boat extract a yellowfin tuna from wet storage.

The gloved hands of deckhand Sujaa.

A deckhand from an anchored fishing boat carries a yellowfin tuna to sell at the Male fish market.

Selling goes on from mid-morning into the late afternoon at the Male fish market.

Travel agency owner Mohamed Naeem displays some skipjack tuna that his father picked out. The fish cost 40 rufiyaa per kilo, or about $2.50 USD.

Some customers take a break from surveying inside the Male fish market.

Abdul Samadu has been cutting fish at the Male fish market for 13 years.

A skipjack tuna meets the knife.

What fish parts are not taken by customers is sold to fishermen for bait.

While tuna is the main draw of the Male fish market, there also other species, such as these bodiless red snapper.

An expert fish cutter finishes dicing a tuna for a customer at the Male fish market.

Tuna meat is used in all kinds of local dishes, commonly in "short eats," a selection of Maldivian snacks that are often a combination of dough, chilies, coconut, and tuna.

Fishmonger and tuna boat deckhand Ibrahim Ali displays one of his day's catches, a yellowfin tuna.