Paolo Fanciulli was a fisherman with a chip on his shoulder. Like many artisanal fishermen in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere, the fish stocks that he relied on for a living off the Tuscan coast of Italy had been depleted by illegal trawler ships that came in close to the coast.
But fish stocks in an area quickly decline from trawling, for a number of reasons. The method sometimes captures endangered sharks or turtles along with the intended fish targets. It captures young fish that haven’t grown large enough to be marketable, knocking out multiple generations in an area and depleting an area’s stocks for years to come. Trawling nets also ruin the infrastructure of the seafloor as they drag along the bottom.
Artisanal fishers like Fanciulli, on the other hand, tend to use smaller, more selective nets or fishing lines. Their operations are usually small, and have lasted for generations in many areas. “They want to keep a healthy ecosystem,” Aguila says.An Artful Solution “One of the most effective solutions is to physically prevent trawling through artificial reefs,” Fanciulli says. “So I started working on this project, trying to combine the protection of the seabed with something that could also give an added value to our environment, something as beautiful as a sculpture.”