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THE
TONNARA OF CAMOGLI By
Annamaria "Lilla" Mariotti Here
is the story of a fish, a net, and of the men who work with it.
This is also the story of a very ancient Mediterranean fishing tradition
who has existed for thousand of years and that is at risk of disappearing.
The
fish I am talking about is the bluefin tuna, ( Thunnus thynnus, Linnaeus
1758 ) called red tuna in Italy, because of its meat which is red and very much
appreciated by working people and gourmets alike. For thousand of years the
bluefin tuna has been a great natural economic resource for all the
Mediterranean area, there was work for fishermen, net and boat builders and
every one involved with this kind of fishing. The
bluefin tuna is a pelagic fish, it is very powerful, it can swim very long
distances each day, it can live long time, probably more than 50 years, and its
weight can reach 500 kilos (about 1,000 pounds).
It heats great quantities of
squid, crustaceans and fishes and it has no enemies except sharks and men.
Its meat has been used since the most ancient times, there is a painting
in a cave on an island near Sicily, showing
this fish, which is dated back to 9000 B.C. The Greek and the Romans wrote a lot about this fish
and we can find recipes and descriptions of the bluefin tuna in ancient
manuscripts and on vases and paintings.
The Romans in particular used the interior of the tuna for the
preparation of a sauce called "GARUM" which was very much appreciated
at that time. In the past,
bluefin were captured in Italy on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily.
At the place it was captured, the fish was butchered in specialized
factories. Virtually all of the
fish was used, the muscle was canned, the heart and ovaries were preserved in
salt, the testis were consumed in the fresh market and the head was processed
for oil. The
bluefin tuna migrates every year from the cold North Atlantic waters through the
Straits of Gibraltar to the warmer waters of the Mediterranean where it spawns
beginning in the West in May and continuing across the sea to the Est where it
finishes its reproductive cycle in the Aegean Sea and on the coasts of Turkey.
After the spawning period and after the young tuna are hatched, they spend their
first year or more in the Mediterranean and then the bluefin follows the same
return path to the Atlantic Ocean and everything will start again the next year.
Recent studies show that some of the fishes remain in the Mediterranean.
These fishes are called "standing".
The
ancient net system of catching the fish called the TONNARA originated
from the study of the habits of the tuna.
Because it swims near the coast, men
built a net that goes perpendicular to the coast towards the open sea, and this
directs the tuna to a sequence of
"rooms", made of net, where the tuna enter and where it swims from one
room to another, untill it reaches the last one : the camera della morte, the
room of death, from where it cannot escape.
This is the TUNA TRAP. In
Italy, in past centuries, there were a lot of Tuna traps, the biggest and most
numerous were along the coasts of
Sardinia and Sicily, but now there are only a
few left, three in Sardinia, two in Sicily and one in Camogli, the only one in
the North of Italy. This
TONNARA is very old, the first written records
date back to the 17th century, but it is believed to be more ancient
because in 1300 there was a tuna trap already working in the near town of
Portofino and it was not the only one. In
1603 the authorities of the time declared that a certain quantity of the
captured tuna had to be given to the population, this was to support the less
wealthy people. In 1612
another decree stated that only men of Camogli could work at the tonnara and
again it is said that free tuna must be gived to the people of Camogli.
This edict was repeated during the centuries until 1817. The
17th century must have
been a golden century for the
tonnara of Camogli. It was the most
important of all others on the Italian Riviera and it was very rewarding for
with its proceeds it was possible to renew roads, to extend the old pier in the
harbour and even to build a Sanctuary on an hill surrounding Camogli, where the
Holy Virgin appeared to a young sheperdess in 1518. People working on the sea are very pious. During
the 1700's there was not much written on the tonnara, we only know that it was
still working. During
the 1800's the story develops through alternate events.
The Tonnara of Camogli was no more the
first in its field because there began to be a shortage of tuna
and to keep the tonnara rewarding the fishermen started to catch any kind
of fish that came into the nets. In
1877 the tonnara was put up for
auction and in the following years it had many different owners.
At the turn of the century the tonnara was still operating.
Records report that in 1913 it caught 4,400 punds
of tuna and in 1914 was again the most productive among all the other
tonnaras operating in Italy, but in 1923 the installation was closed.
In 1937, with a great ceremony in the Town Hall of Camogli e new
Co-operative Association was created under the patronage of the Mayor of the
time, a great friend of the fishermen.
The tonnara operated, with a short stop during WWII, and it continued
untill 1979. But nobody
wanted to see this ancient fishing system come to an end, so in 1982
the newly created Cooperativa Pescatori di Camogli (A co-operative among the
fishermen of Camogli) resurrected
it and the tonnara is working today. The
TONNARA OF CAMOGLI has been in the same location for centuries. There is a
mountain at the East side of the town, called "MONTE DI PORTOFINO" (MOUNT
OF PORTOFINO) and it is at the
bottom of this mountain the the nets are located every year, in April, and there
they stay untill the end of September.
But the work begins during the winter; it is necessary to make the nets
ready and this work it is made by the fishermen themselves. Among them is a
fisherman that is 90 years old, who
only very recently retired, but who still provides the treasure of his
experience to the younger men and it is a very male culture.
The ropes, which support the net and
are the connection of the net to the anchors that shape the net, are twisted in
a small village near Camogli, San Fruttuoso, using very ancient tools.
The village can be reached only by boat. All of the nets and the ropes
are made of coconut yarn which
arrives every year from India, with the exception of the camera della morte,
which is made of nylon. Only the
camera della morte has a floor in the room.
During the summer, while the nets are in the sea, a lot of small marine
organisms and algae adhere to the nets and there is nothing else to do at the
end of the season but to cut them and to leave them into the sea.
As they are made of a natural material, they do not cause polllution. In fact, the fishermen recognize that the fouling
organisms on the net are excellent habitat for larval and juvenile fishes and
act as a small nursery. Only the
piece made of nylon is recovered to be used again. The
tonnara has a roughly rectangular shape, the tail,
which is anchored to a rock at the bottom of the mountain and that goes
toward the deep sea. This reaches the installation, called the island, which, in
this case, is made of two rooms, the fist one the "collection
room" and the second one is the sadly known "death room".
The Tonnaras in Sardinia and Sicily have six or more rooms.
The walls of the net go as deep as 120 feet. A big boat, called "the
arm-chair" is moored at one end of the death room.
In the past times, the fisherme used to eat and sleep on the boat.
Now they go back and forth three times a day from the harbour of Camogli
by a smaller boat called "the donkey", because the load of the catch
is carried on it. This boat is
followed on a tow line by a smaller
one, called "the look-out", because the chief guard of the crew uses
this small boat to stay in the middle of the "death room" to see if
the net is full of fish. In
the past the crew was made of at least twenty men, but now there are two crews
of six men who work in shifts every week. They
go to the nets three times a day : at the first dawning, again in the
mid-morning, and mid afternoon. There
are differences among the fishermen of Camogli and those of the other tonnaras.
The tonnaras of Sardinia and Sicily have a man, whose title is Rais, who
is the chief of the crew. He
decides where and when to put the nets and when it is time for the
"mattanza" (harvest). The
fishermen are called "tonnarotti" (which means men of the tunas).
There are at least five or six boats and each
has a very unique and special name.
When it is time to catch the fish, the tonnarotti carry our the
"mattanza" which appears to be a cruel fishing method carried out with
much ceremony. The floor net of the death room is raised at the order of the
Rais and the tunas are landed one by one with
a large gaff hook attached to a rope and the fish is pulled to the boat
and placed in the bottom. A special
tonnarotti then cuts two large arteries in the fish and it quicly bleeds to
death in about 15 seconds. When you
think about it, it is probably more humane that being tied to a line for several
hours before being brough onto the boat.
The "mattanza" is
carried out among ancient songs and
shoutingt, while the water boils over the dying fishes. The
men of Camogli don't like exotic names, they are proud to be just fishermen and
the head of the crew is only the "Chief Guard".
In the tonnara of Camogli there is no "mattanza", the net is
lifted by the six men in great silence, only a few words, and some vivid phrase
if something goes wrong. Now
is getting more and more difficult every year to put a crew together. Young people don't feel like to afford such a hard work
and older people, after many years of work in the tonnara, are waiting to retire,
but they cannot find young fishermen to whom to teach this ancient art.
This is why the tonnara is at risk of disappearing, after centuries of
traditions and this is why my aim is that to make people aware of it. |