Page 268 - KATE_JOHNSTON_2017

at the port in Favignana, he told me that the story of the fishermen was too brutal. The MPA

was offering fishermen new kinds of employment such as data collection, or suggesting

pescaturismo as an alternative to fishing. As I related earlier, pescaturismo is a kind of fish

eco-tourism, in which fishermen take guests out on a boat to participate in fishing activities

and eat lunch from the catch. Stefano suggests that this can benefit the fishermen.

…it’s money for the fishermen because when they go outside with the boat, in a
single day they earn less money than when they do pescaturismo, first. Second
thing is that when they do ordinary fishing activity they put in the sea ten pieces of
net, they put one here, one here, one here, when they do pescaturismo they just put
one, so you have a real low fishing activity, so they fish less and they earn more
when they do pescaturismo…but here pescaturismo is not very popular because
they have to respect a lot of laws for the safeness of the boat and sanitary aspects
due to cooking and so on, you have a lot of bureaucracy…and they have to spend
a lot of money to get their boats ready for pescaturismo, so just a few of them do
this. (S Donati 2013, pers. comm. 3 July)

Fishing tourism predates pescaturismo. In Favignana tourism started in the 1980s, at which

time a series of popular Italian journals promoted the activities of the tonnara and the Egadi

Islands. Most focused on the mattanza in their reportage and imagery. For example, the

magazine Sicilia Tempo in a 1984 article under the tourism section opens with details of the

first mattanza of the season (see fig. 6.6). Clemente recalls the period when tourists started to

the come to Favignana:

At first there were just a few people to come to see how things ran, then it became
common, they started coming from all over the world. A few years ago I was
watching a TV show and inside the restaurant [in the tv show] they were showing
a photo of me. (2013, pers. comm. 7 July)

Like rais Giacchino, Clemente is a familiar face in the magazines and on postcards. Tourism

continues to benefit some locals from Favignana. Like Rosario, the influx of tourists in the

summer months keeps him busy with a steady flow of visitors who he takes out every day to

experience fishing, swimming and dining at sea. Tourism also offered some cooks and shop

256