"If the fish die, the fishermen automatically die too."
The following is part of Currents and Tidings, a series that explores the implications of climate change for fishing and fisher livelihoods through the stories and voices of fishers.
Fishing communities have a great deal at stake in our collective response to climate change. As the rate and unpredictability of ecological change continues to intensify, fishers who spend every day of every year engaging closely with the marine environment will be the first to notice and to feel the effects.
The ecological relationships and human elements of fisheries have long been neglected in favor of conventional fisheries management, in which scientific knowledge is assumed to be ‘more true’. But human and ecological systems profoundly influence one another, and successful adaptation to climate change will require a deeper understanding of and more nuanced attention to traditional practices and fishers’ knowledge. Fishers cannot provide the solutions for or clarify the causes of climate-driven environmental change on their own, but their lived experiences have an important role to play in maintaining the ecological and cultural richness of coastal communities.
I recently spoke with a few fishermen from one such community with a history of fishing that dates back centuries. The lagoon of Orbetello is an enclosed body of water on the coast of Tuscany. Spanning nearly 27 square kilometers and with an average depth of one meter, the lagoon connects to the Tyrrhenian Sea through three manmade channels. Historically, juvenile fish of all kinds—sea bass, sea bream, mullet, black goby, and eel—entered the lagoon during periods of high tide in order to find refuge from the tumultuous sea. When these fish tried to return to the sea with the next high tide, they were caught in fishers’ nets set up in the channels.
By the 1990s, the population of fish in the lagoon had fallen drastically. Overall, fewer fish in the Tyrrhenian Sea meant fewer juveniles seeking refuge in the lagoon. In the same period, the strength of the tides changed such that the water level during high tide no longer reached the necessary height to flood the channels. This threatened the exchange of water and fish between the sea and the lagoon, and the water in the lagoon began to stagnate.
Combined with poor management and local pollution, the weakening of the tidal exchange caused the lagoon of Orbetello to go into a state of ecological crisis in the 1990s. In response, the local government installed hydraulic pumps in the channels to artificially exchange the lagoon water with the sea. The natural repopulation of fish in the lagoon, however, remained low. In order to safeguard the long tradition of fishing in Orbetello, the fishing cooperative “La Peschereccia” began artificially repopulating sea bream (orata), flathead grey mullet (cefalo) and eel as part of a program which continues today. The cooperative is made up of just under 100 fishers who use traditional fixed nets and eel traps, just like fishers in the lagoon have been doing for generations.
Despite these interventions, the lagoon of Orbetello remains particularly susceptible to environmental changes because it is an enclosed body of water. Fish survive in a very limited range of ecological conditions—temperature, oxygen levels, salinity—and are sensitive to minor changes in the environment. Small fluctuations in an open sea can be counterbalanced rather easily and fish may not be as directly impacted, but the same fluctuation in a closed body of water can have devastating effects.
During the summer of 2015, the lagoon experienced an unprecedented heat wave that triggered a die-off of 130,000 kilograms of fish. The water both inside and outside of the lagoon reached record temperatures, 34°C and 30°C, respectively. The temperature spike created the ideal conditions for a large algae bloom, fueled by nutrient-rich sediments from years of agricultural runoff into the lagoon. The algae consumed much of the available oxygen, leaving the fish to suffocate. The hydraulic pumps, installed to prevent this very sort of crisis, were no help cooling the lagoon. All they could do was exchange the hot water of the lagoon with the hot water of the sea.
Massimo Bernacchini is the ex-President of La Peschereccia, and over the last 26 years has held practically every job in the lagoon of Orbetello except for fishing. Sergio Amenta has been a fisherman since 1978, and his uncle was one of the founders of the cooperative. Marco Giudici has been fishing since 1976, learning from his father, grandfather, and uncles, all of whom made their living fishing in the lagoon. Marco Aldi began his career as a fisherman in 1986, joining the cooperative in place of a fisher who went into retirement. I talked to these four men about climate change, the 2015 fish die-off, and the changing relationship between fishers and the lagoon.
“The reference points that we have come to rely on—the progression of the seasons and the presence of certain weather events—are no longer reliable. The relationship between fisher and lagoon has completely changed.”
Emily: What kinds of environmental changes have you noticed in recent years in Orbetello?
Massimo: The defined seasons—autumn, spring, summer, winter—do not exist like they used to. Winter comes and, by March, summer has already arrived. Sometimes we have a summer where the heat never breaks for months on end. For the last six, seven years the fishers have been discouraged. The reference points that we have come to rely on—the progression of the seasons and the presence of certain weather events—are no longer reliable. The relationship between fisher and lagoon has completely changed.
Sergio: I will give you a bit of a romanticized response. Historically, traditional fishing was linked to the weather, above all else. In the winter, the fisherman would wait for the burrasca, the strong nocturnal wind, to stir up the water and cause the eels to emerge from the mud. For the same reason, he would wait for winter storms. This year, there was not a single evening thunderstorm all winter. No thunder, no lightning. Those are the things we wait for, the perfect atmospheric conditions for eel fishing. When the storms come, perhaps the fisherman passes a sleepless night waiting to check his eel fishing spot in the morning. He is apprehensive, he is agitated because he feels that the night is good; it is the right night to bring satisfaction in the morning. In the last few years, these conditions have been missing.
There used to be a proverb for the summer months: il tempo reale, the “noble weather”, which brought the scirocco in the morning, a wind from the south, and the maestrale, the northwest wind, in the afternoon. It was a cute village saying, you know? Il tempo reale. Now it never happens anymore. [1]
Emily: So it sounds like the seasonal rhythms are out of whack. How has this influenced the seasonality of your fishing?
Massimo: The cycles of fishing have changed. Historically, seasonal changes in the lagoon lure the fish toward our nets, like the cold snap in the winter. If the temperature never drops, the fish has no reason to move himself into shallower, warmer water, so we don’t catch any fish. Their reproductive cycles are impacted, too. The classic period for the maturation of the mullet eggs to make bottarga occurred in July and August, with the hot temperatures and high salinity in the lagoon. Now, the eggs do not come until September. Even October.
“If, in a month, you fish a fish you are waiting for now, you will have the fish, but your pockets are empty.”
Sergio: Climate change has also impacted our winter eel fishing. Historically, we waited for the eel in November and December, which is when the market demands it. With the elevated water temperature these past few years, the eel migrates from the Sargasso Sea a month late. If you do not fish the eel in November, and you do not fish it in December, but you fish it in January, nobody wants it anymore. The Christmas season has already passed, so you have a huge difficulty selling that type of eel. These are not things to be understated, because, in the end, you can fish traditionally and sustainably and it is a beautiful thing. But then there has to be sustenance. If, in a month, you fish a fish you are waiting for now, you will have the fish, but your pockets are empty. [2]
Emily: Can you tell me more about the fish die-off in the lagoon during the summer of 2015?
Massimo: The official data that was communicated to the public was 130,000 kilograms of dead fish collected from the die-off. But nobody knows what 130,000 kilograms of fish looks like. Nobody realizes what that means in square meters, on solid ground, 130,000 kilograms. For most, it is just a number. That 130,000 kilograms is a soccer field of fish. And who saw the death toll mount day by day, hour by hour? At the very minimum, the fishermen deserve the dignity of being listened to about their own livelihood. Instead, we were represented as a number, as a quantity—50 fishers, 130,000 kilograms, X number of euros. And that is not how it is.
Sergio: Those dead fish had a story to tell, an important story. More than anything, they were our future, but they also had their own story. But that is how it goes… the whole event was forgotten, in the end.
Emily: With the increased unpredictability in the lagoon, and the rising frequency of this kind of environmental crisis, do the fishermen play a role in the decision-making process about how to manage the environment?
Marco A: I have been astounded throughout the years with how little the fishermen have been involved in decisions about the interventions in the lagoon of Orbetello. The fisherman has always been the one who lives day after day on the lagoon. We are the history of Orbetello, but we have become spectators of the decisions that affect our day-to-day lives.
“The fisherman has always been the one who lives day after day on the lagoon. We are the history of Orbetello, but we have become spectators of the decisions that affect our day-to-day lives.”
Massimo: We are in a very difficult and complicated situation after the fish mortality last year. Today, the lagoon is managed hydraulically, with water pumped from the sea in order to prevent the ecosystem from going into crisis, but then it goes into crisis anyway. Once an environmental crisis has occurred, once the system has already collapsed, there is no solution. We need to focus on prevention.
Something that has been forgotten for many years is that the most important work in the lagoon is monitoring the environment. This monitoring can only be done if you spend every day on the lagoon. And who better than the traditional fisherman who has worked and lived on the lagoon every day of his life to do this monitoring? Not to give the solutions, but to provide his observations about how the lagoon is changing day after day. This experiential knowledge is critical for the politicians and scientists.
But even if the fisherman has the experience to say what kind of environmental intervention is best at any given moment, no one listens to him. The management decisions are made by technicians who perhaps are not even familiar with this environment. So the role of the fisherman is at risk of losing all of its value.
Marco G: The important thing is that the fisherman is a steward of the environment. If he takes care of the environment, it pays him back. The health of the lagoon is more important for us than for anyone else, because if the fish die, the fishermen automatically die too. This is an important fact that is too often misunderstood by the people outside of our reality.
These interviews have been translated from Italian, condensed and edited.
[1] C'era un detto che si riferiva all'estate: "il tempo reale"—il tempo reale era quando di mattina c'era lo scirocco, un vento che viene dal sud, e di pomeriggio il maestrale. Era proprio un proverbio carino, paesano, no? Il tempo reale, nel senso proprio di nobile, eccezionale. E questo non succede più. Non lo vedo più.
[2] Alla fine, pescare in maniera tradizionale, pescare in maniera sostenibile... sì sono tutte belle cose, però alla fine ci dev'essere la sostanza. Se peschi un tipo di pesce che aspetti ora, fra un mese, la soddisfazione magari non ce l'hai. Sì ce l'hai di pesca, ma non ce l'hai di tasca.
Photo by Francesca Gambato.
Emily graduated from Yale University with a B.S. in geology. Don't ask her about rocks though, she is interested in the intersection of fisheries, fisherfolk, and climate change.