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Sicily Fishing

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Fishing Industry in Sicily - http://www.sensationalsicily.com
Medieval Fishing off Sicily - The most important fishing industry of the medieval Mediterranean was, arguably, in Sicily, and even there fish played a modest albeit constant role in the food of the island. There were two kinds of fish caught in the fifteenth century, the so-called blue fish, mostly sardines and anchovies that had some limited economic importance in Sicily's export trade, and the white fish, such as John Dory, turbot, sea bass, grouper, comber, etc., which were secondary in economic importance. However, fish had no overall importance in either the diet or the economy of medieval Sicily and the total number of fishermen was few. But the fasting prescriptions of the church assured that fish would always be in demand. In data for the vice-regent from 1415 we see that fresh and dried fish were bought ten days out of the month. On Friday and Saturday, fresh fish, eel, salted little tuna, and eggs were eaten instead of meat.
Messina, Cefalù, Termini, Trapani, and Palermo were the five fishing centers of Sicily in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, all fishing sardines for the most part. Fish were in seasonal demand and especially during Lent, when church-mandated fasting requirements limited the amount of meat that could be eaten. During the winter, the fishing industry was involved in salting sardines and, especially, tonnina (little tuna, Euthynnus alletteratus).
The fishermen encircled the shoals of fish with their seine nets and unloaded their catch directly onto the beach. The fish were processed for salting, a small amount perhaps set aside for local cooks of these coastal villages, while the fishermen victualed their boats with bread and wine. Villages of the interior ate freshwater fish from local rivers and streams or eels from the Simeto River near Paterno. In the twelfth century eels were caught in a complicated device called a tarusi, consisting of a series of chambers whereby the eel is unable to turn around and get out.
Palermo was the most important of the five fishing towns in medieval Sicily, and in the fourteenth century the fishermen lived in an area of the city near the sea called the Kalsa. A fisherman's life was a poor and hard one. The Kalsa still exists and even today one finds fishermen, smugglers, and mafiosi (so they say) living there. It was in Palermo where the net- makers were and where most of the fishermen could be recruited.
Fishing zones were well demarcated and the fishing of sardines from Termini was the economically most important fishing activity. The zone off Trapani was rich in fish, and we know that agents for the royal kitchen of the Angevin King in Naples, Charles d'Anjou, came here in 1270 to buy dacteri (flying fish?) and cervige (amberjack?). The zone off Messina was known for its swordfish and it still is.
Fish were also caught in more rudimentary ways using traditional techniques that go back to the Arab era and earlier. Usually this meant two men in a boat with a net. The Arab influence on Sicilian fishing and nautical affairs in general is attested to by the Sicilian fishing and nautical vocabulary which is thoroughly rooted in the Arabic language. Take, for instance, the Sicilian word xabica, the big fishing net that is attached to shore and moved seaward in a great sweeping swath by a bark, a small sailing ship. The word derives from the Arabic word shabaka, meaning "net." But as some scholars have pointed out, the interplay among Arabo-Berber, Italo-Siculo, Arab, and Turkish cultures was complex enough to find influence a constant two- and even three- way street in the Mediterranean Sea when it comes to nautical matters.
There were fishermen who used another kind of net called a spiruni which was very thin and expensive to purchase. The archdeacon of Cefalù bought three of these nets in 1431. They had eighteen stitchings and cost as much as a ton of fresh fish. Other kinds of nets were the rizza, a bit bigger and made of plaited grass cording, used for larger fish. The nassa was a complicated device used for catching eels or lobster and those fishermen who used them were called nassaroli.
The business of fishing in Sicily was already an ancient profession and well organized by the fifteenth century. But fishing comprised a whole ensemble of activities that went far beyond fishing. There were instrument makers, cordage makers, fishing zone administrators, packers, haulers, net makers, and salters, as well as the fishermen. Curiously, at the end of the fourteenth century and into the fifteenth century many fishermen came from the tiny island of Lipari off Sicily's north coast.
"Mattanza: Love and Death in the Sea of Sicily" by Theresa Maggio
A writer explores her obsession with an ancient Sicilian ritual steeped in the erotics of killing.
June 5, 2000 | "I had found my island, and I wanted to stay forever," Theresa Maggio writes in "Mattanza," her valentine to tiny Favignana, off the coast of Sicily, where each spring for several years she witnessed the tonnara, a ritualized tuna hunt dating from ancient times. She's riveted by the mattanza, the moment at which the giant bluefin tuna, having been herded into an elaborate netting system, are hauled one by one onto the fishing boats and killed. In the process of documenting the history and customs of the tonnaroti, the tuna fishermen, Maggio lays bare her own quest to become part of life on the stark, beautiful island. Her quixotic desire is to be more than a tourist, more than a journalist -- to become a member of Favignana's eccentric cast of characters herself.
Maggio finds the ritual hunt close to mythical, with its songs and invocations, its bloody celebration of "the wheel of life, death and rebirth." The traps are set to take advantage of the bluefin's yearly migration to the Mediterranean to spawn, and Maggio dwells lovingly on this fusion of sex and death:
It is possible that some of the captured tuna that swims into Favignana's trap began life there when their parents, in a last-ditch effort to procreate, ejected their sperm and eggs as they were being killed. Sex, death, and begetting mingle in this briny vessel of primordial juices.
She's obviously turned on by the erotics of hunting and killing.gustibus non est disputandum, I guess, but she lost me as she worked this theme. At one point, having gotten a strikingly masculine tonnaroto into her bed, she seizes the chance to ask the burning question: "How does it feel to kill a giant bluefin with your bare hands?" He's not impressed with the direction their pillow talk is taking, and she never gets an answer.
Scenes like that have an appealing element of self-deprecation; but in the end Maggio's self-exposure undermines the more serious aspects of her project. There's a neediness to the way she longs to be accepted by the tonnaroti, not to mention the women and older men in Favignana's piazza and cafes. In many ways she's butting her head against a wall, and she knows it. There's no easy social slot for her to fit into in Sicily, no place for an unmarried, independent woman in her late 30s who bicycles around town and crouches in boats, scribbling notes as the tonnaroti work. Again and again she's asked, "Why don't you get married and quit writing books?" The Favignani are warm and generous to her, and she does achieve her fondest hope when the rais -- the distant, autocratic leader of the tuna hunt -- tells her, "You are a tonnorota, a member of the crew." I'm sure it was a heartfelt moment, but she should know that Italians are prone to extravagance. The truth is, she'll always be a bit of a freak to them.
By not acknowledging the tension between the ways she feels accepted and the ways she'll never truly fit in, Maggio ends up sentimentalizing the Favignani and their vanishing way of life. Her account of the history of the Sicilian tuna fishing industry suffers from a similar tendency to gloss over ugly realities. She has done plenty of research, but the overall picture is so idyllic, with centuries of beloved, benevolent bosses and humble, satisfied workers, that it strains credulity. And while I'm as annoyed as the next Italian-American by knee-jerk references to the Mafia in discussions of anything Italian, come on -- there's not one mention of La Cosa Nostra in this book. Did this single corner of Sicily really remain pure?
Most disturbing, Maggio lets emotion color her treatment of complicated issues, notably the role of the Japanese in the tuna fishing industry. She casts them as wily, ruinous intruders whose interest in the time-honored rituals of the tonnara is not as pure as hers and whose taste for tuna meat is somehow deplorable. ("It was only the insatiable appetite of the Japanese for bluefin that kept the Favignana tonnara afloat in recent years ... The Japanese waited with sharp knives at Castiglione's slaughterhouse for the Chamber of Death to give up its fruit.") She's angry at a Japanese film crew for filming the mattanza and getting "the royal treatment" from the rais, "close to tears" when they're invited onto the boat one day and she's not. It's a tricky issue; I'd have liked less of Maggio's schoolgirlish resentment and more information on the politics of the tuna industry and the choices facing the tonnaroti.
Luckily, the Favignani resist Maggio's wish that they be either larger than life or less than complexly human. In the end, they emerge from "Mattanza" as people blessed to live in a naturally sumptuous place, hanging on to what they can in a world that's less and less under their control.
Mattanza
For hundreds of years, fishermen in Sicily and Sardinia have used dense nets to capture the Mediterranean bluefin tuna (thunnus thinnus) in a quasi-spiritual procedure known as the mattanza. This takes place in May and June, when the giant fish swim past the coasts. In Sicily, the few remaining mattanzas take place off the island's western point among the Egadi Islands. The term "mattanza" comes to us from an old Spanish word, matar, meaning "to kill." Many terms, such as rais (head fisherman of the mattanza), are actually Arabic in origin, introduced in the ninth century when, during the Arab domination of Sicily, the technique became popular. There are indications, however, that it is much older, possibly originating, in some form, in the Phoenician or Carthaginian era. Averaging over two hundred kilograms (over four hundred pounds), the fish are now popular in the Japanese market, where the delicious red meat is used in sashimi and sushi. It must be said that this fresh tasty meat is a breed apart from the
bland whitish stuff sold in cans. Bluefin, many of which escape into the Atlantic, may also be consumed young.
The keys to a successful mattanza, apart from the obvious questions of supply (overfishing has reduced the number of larger tuna in recent years) and weather, are organisation and technique. A series of vast nets are lowered into the water. The tuna are captured in successive nets which are gradually restricted in size and raised toward the surface, where the fish are attacked with what might be described as large spears in a sophisticated trap system.
Reaching 4.3 meters (14 feet) in length and weighing as much as 800 kilograms (1800 pounds), the bluefin is the largest tuna, surpassing the skipjack, albacore, yellowfin and bigeye. Unlike these other worldwide species, the bluefin lives in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
The network of net chambers is called an isola (island). One of the interesting things about the mattanza is the team effort of the numerous fishermen involved in each catch. From his boat, the rais directs the work of the men in the other small boats. Because a mattanza is the catch of an entire school of fish, dozens of tuna may be captured. The ambience of bloody water and particularly large fish, which may be compared to cattle or large game, leaves one with a singular impression. There's nothing like watching the fish struggle as they are herded into ever smaller, shallower net chambers (the final one is called the "chamber of death") and finally lifted onto the boats. Indeed, the term mattanza has found its way into the Italian vernacular as a synonym for "massacre."
Just how long the mattanza itself survives remains to be seen. As time passes, the tuna are diminishing in size and numbers, while demand increases in world markets. This has prompted legal restrictions. A hundred years ago, there were dozens of small "tonnare" (tuna canneries) along the Sicilian coasts, though the word "tonnara" originally referred to the complex series of nets used in tuna fishing during the mattanza. The occupation of tuna fishing was more widespread, with hundreds of tonnarotti (tuna fishermen) throughout Sicily. Tunny fishing has usually been a seasonal profession in Sicily, with the tonnarotti catching other fish during the autumn and winter.
Breaded fried tuna steaks are a traditional Sicilian specialty. Tuna steaks are also good simply grilled. For something different, try it "Japanese-Sicilian" style --raw sprinkled with varietal extra virgin olive oil and freshest lemon juice.

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