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In the context of tourism and post tonnara opportunities in Favignana, Giacchino is also well

positioned due to his reputation and position as the last rais and as a mini celebrity. When

another fisherman and pescaturismo operator first introduced me to Giacchino at the port,

Giacchino handed me his business card. The card includes an image of him and says in

Italian ‘want to come on a tour with me?’ On the same card his status is affirmed: ‘fisherman

from 1975 and a Rais from 1997-2007’. The card refers to the day trips that he offers for

tourists, which he describes to me over a drink in the piazza one afternoon as a day seeing

some sights, eating and swimming (G Cataldo 2013, pers. comm. 22 July). For Giacchino,

the closure of the tonnara may have also timed well with his age: stepping into retirement

with the status of the final rais of Favignana.

I move now from Favignana and head to the mainland of Sicily to the port town of

Trapani where large quantities of seafood are docked and processed. We can say that the

wider global situation, summarised by the crisis of marine sustainability, has afforded the

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emergence of new types of eco businesses. Amoroso di Natale is a fisherman by trade .

Recently he has become a self-made entrepreneur and has begun to develop the local fishing

industry in line with core sustainability principles. We chatted one afternoon in the echoic

building where the fish market was soon to re-open and he spoke of his journey from

fisherman to entrepreneur. Most of his projects centered on the term ittiturismo, a neologism

that Amoroso introduced into Italy and the industry. The term ittiturismo shares some

characteristics with pescaturismo but also demonstrates different goals and activities. For

Amoroso ittiturismo is:

…a philosophy of life for the fishermen. Not only does he go to fish and continues
to do his activity but he can be less exploitative of the sea. In this way it ties in
closely with eco sustainability of the environment, because by exploiting the sea
less you can resell for a higher price [pauses and rephrases], in a larger scale.

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