Kate Lamason is on a mission – to ensure that tuna in some of the 336 million cans sold in Australian supermarkets each year is fished and produced here.
Words Sara Mulcahy
Photography Alison George and Brian Cassey
AS a board director for Tuna Australia and for the Cairns Business Women’s Club, a consultant to Women in Seafood Australasia, and mother to three children under seven, you might say Kate Lamason needs all the energy she can get.
She married a tuna fisherman, Rowan Lamason, and together they founded and own Little Tuna, Australia’s only preserved tuna brand made from fish caught in Australia. This business demands even more of her energy although, serendipitously, it’s also a source of pride (and protein).
“I’ve always loved fishing, and I’ve always loved tuna,” says Lamason, who was the Queensland winner of this year’s AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award for her work. “I’m really into my fitness and I’m very much into staying healthy. And there aren’t a lot of proteins you can say are 100 per cent wild anymore.”
Her epiphany came in a supermarket. “One day I was buying canned tuna and Rowan pointed out that none of it is Australian,” she recalls. “I was quite shocked because the supermarket shelf is huge. I just assumed it would be Australian. So I checked, and I was floored to find it’s all imported.”
