ANCONA Everything was expected: the much-invoked storm surges were not a clean slate. Francesco Regoli had predicted it. The director of the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences of the Polytechnic did not slip on the slimy mucilage. No. The force of the waves, in the night between Monday and Tuesday, was not enough to erase that thick and sticky blanket that has been blocking those who live off small-scale fishing on land for over a month.
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The previous
“The problem for us began long before the phenomenon was visible. It’s a disaster, as it was in 1990, when we were stopped for six months due to the same emergency.” Mauro Bartoli is a veteran of casting gillnets that, very long and arranged vertically, are left in the sea so that the prey can reach them and get caught in them. “Their effectiveness,” he explains, “is their invisibility. A characteristic cancelled out by the presence of that magma that invades them to the point of making them heavy and perceptible to the fish. “He offers a clear image of damage with an incalculable perimeter. “There are so many of us: in the ports, on the beaches, in the small docks. It is impossible to count us.” Two, for his expert gaze, are certain numbers: “We, being immobile, have lost 100% of our activity; the largest, which are dedicated to trawling, continue to go out but are down by 20%.” On Friday at 2:30 p.m., Bartoli will go to the Region, sitting next to the representatives of the cooperatives at a fish table, urgently convened by the Councilor for Productive Activities and Fisheries Andrea Maria Antonini.
The summit
“I have the experience on my side, I know what we’re talking about”, is the calling card with which he will present himself at the top of the Palace. Preliminary to obtaining it was the meeting on Monday between Marche, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Emilia Romagna, lands united by the same fate. For Bartoli, the legal form doesn’t matter, but the substance: “We need compensation”. Immediately. Yesterday was the second of three days that he will spend at sea, for Apollinare Lazzari, of the fishermen’s association. “It’s a little better, last night (yesterday, ed.) there was sea, but nothing major – he doesn’t delude himself – you can’t see them at the surface of the water, they will have settled on the bottom”. He will return to land tomorrow and, only by reading the water filters of his boat, always full of slime, will he be certain that the emergency has not been swept away. “Usually they are cleaned two, three times a year, now even every day, otherwise they get clogged, and the engines melt.” This summer of passion, he admits, is not the same for everyone. “The small fishing doesn’t come out – the tone becomes sympathetic – because on the shore there is much more, of slime. It’s not like for us who go trawling. We decide day by day: whoever lowers the net and recovers it the next day can’t afford it.” He reviews the moves, which do not require perspective, but readiness of mind. “When we return to port, we have a meeting and decide how to proceed.” From beginning to beginning.
The drop
Simone Cecchettini’s voice is a common one. As a representative of the Maritime Fishing for the League of Cooperatives, he deserves credit: «We delivered the letter to Councilor Antonini, which expressed our need to be received, and he called us on Friday». The trajectory is traced: «We must decide what support action to undertake». And the following reflection requires that it is not a stopgap solution: «Due to climate change, the phenomenon will reoccur in ten years». Against global warming, the sponge of the much-invoked storm surges is just a drop. In the sea.
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