We stand in supermarkets and we say to people: ‘Would you like to try this tuna? It’s caught by Irish fishermen.’ They kind of snigger at you, because they’re that convinced there’s no such thing as Irish fishermen catching tuna. That’s why we’ve a big poster behind us – showing you the facts and figures, as to where it’s caught, the names of the boats and who catches it,” says John Shine of Shine’s Seafood, based in Killybegs, Co Donegal.

Tuna is most certainly not the first (or 10th!) fish that comes to mind when you think of Irish seafood, but that’s something John and Marianne Shine are trying to change with their business Shine’s Seafood, which has put albacore tuna on Irish shelves for the first time.

Irish Country Living met John, who told us his journey started when he took a summer job as a fisherman in Balbriggan while awaiting his Leaving Cert results.

He was still fishing 20 years later.

“This was back in 1980. There weren’t an awful lot of opportunities then – and a job is a job. It was fortunate I got jobs on good fishing boats. Then a Killybegs company bought the boat I was on, so I moved from Dublin to Killybegs with the boat.”

The Bray native fished “all over” in his years at sea. “We fished out of Norway. We fished out of the UK. I fished on all different types of boats. And in my travels as a fisherman, there were a lot of things I saw that didn’t make sense.”

One of these things was the throwing of monkfish over the side, when “you’d have been thrown over the side on a French boat if you threw out a monkfish”.On Ireland’s joining the EU, “other people came along and said: ‘Hey, guys, we’ll buy that stuff’ [about the monkfish]. And I suppose the same thing happened with the tuna.”

The tuna he is referring to is albacore, which swims up from the Bay of Biscay, comes up off the southwest coast of Ireland and back to America. “So they do a sort of a lap,” as John puts it.

John says Irish fishermen weren’t even aware of albacore tuna until 30 years ago. It was brought to their attention when they saw Spanish, French and Portugeuse fishing boats fishing them.

There was neither the knowledge of – or appetite for – albacore tuna in Ireland at that time, so it predominantly went to France and Spain “where they knew what it was, they knew the potential”, says John.

John has always thought about bringing albacore tuna to the Irish market – but life got in the way. He stopped working on boats when he married his wife Marianne. He “went ashore into business in Killybegs”, opening up a fish-and-chip shop that he ran for 21 years with Marianne and his daughters.

That, other business interests, and raising a young family kept the couple busy. However, two years ago – when when the Shine daughters were finished college – John and Marianne decided to pursue their dream of selling Irish tuna. So Shines Seafood was born. They were encouraged by their daughter Ciara who, having finished a degree in business and marketing, was able to bring her expertise to the table.

John describes Ciara as having “forgotten more things about fish than most people will ever know”. Ciara is involved in the ACORNS programme, which nurtures female entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland and is supported by the Department of Agriculture CEDRA funding.

Further expertise was brought into the business when, within two weeks of approaching their Local Enterprise Office, they were put on a Food Academy course in Leitrim.

getting hooked

The tuna product the Shines have brought to market is Irish tuna, preserved in jars of olive oil, a concept they’ve adopted from the Basque region of Spain. Marianne came across this when she worked for a Basque fish-buying company that was based in Killybegs, primarily to export Irish fish to Spain.

“In the north of Spain, in the Basque country, they jar this up like people would make homemade jam here. And they preserve it in the best of olive oil. It’s a tradition – it’s how they preserved their food before refrigeration,” explains John.

“It’s just a totally different experience. We used to get presents of this stuff sent to us. My three daughters were young at the time, and they would just open the jars like a packet of crisps, so we knew there was something there. But the timing was never right.”

John says that a lot of the tuna Irish people eat is skipjack tuna, which he describes as “aggressively fishy”.

“We’ve kind of been introduced to the bottom end of the market in terms of quality and flavour and taste,” says John. “That’s why so many people in Ireland put mayonnaise on tuna – to calm down the fishiness. Albacore tuna, on the other hand, has a sweet, mild flavour. When we do tastings in shops, it’s so simple,” says John. “People cannot believe that tuna tastes so good. I don’t expect people to buy it because it’s caught by Irish fishermen. I expect people to buy this because, my God, this is a good product!”

fish sales

Within the next two weeks, Shines Seafood will have five different offerings in their range. Their tuna retails at €5.90 for a 227g jar. “That works out at €26 a kilogramme, but some brands of crisps are €102 a kilogramme,” says John. “I always say, cheap tuna is not good – and good tuna is not cheap!”

John feels one thing limiting the tuna industry in Ireland is the size of the quota. Ireland has a quota to catch 2,583 tonnes of albacore tuna every year. The total annual catch for European boats is 31,000 tonnes, so Ireland has about 8% of the European quota.

In all, 2,583 tonnes equates to about 200 articulated lorry loads. “So if you’re driving along and there were two miles of trucks on the side of the road, that’s what it would be,” says John. This compares, for example, with the quota for mackerel, which is nearly 90,000 tonnnes this year for Ireland alone.

“We need our officials to push and get a bigger quota, because the quota is not strong enough to sustain an industry as such. I would say 80% of the European quota is caught in Irish water – but not all by Irish boats.

“During the season there could be up to 100 Spanish and French boats working off the Blasket Islands. There’s nothing wrong with that, we can catch fish off their coast too – but it’s something that’s going on outside our doorstep: millions of euros worth of fish being taken to help support jobs in other countries. The resources we have on the west coast of Ireland could bring a lot of prosperity to the area. It’s a gold mine – and we don’t even know it.”

However, John is still positive about the future of the Irish tuna industry, both for him and his family. He would love to bring the two other Shine daughters – Darragh and Erin – into the business too. “It would be just great if we could bring the three girls back. I’d depart this world in a happy state of mind if that could happen.”CL

Shines Albacore tuna is available in premium food stores nationwide as well as in 162 SuperValu stores. Visit www.shines

seafood.ie for more information.