B&B Trapani - The ancient Mattanza

In the sea of Trapani in the spring is fulfilled the ancient ritual of the "mattanza", the tuna fishing using traditional methods of culture and rich history.
The mattanza was an extraordinary spectacle, in which the massive killing of fish is not a gratuitous violence but answers to specific social and economic needs: a good fishing season depends on the fate of hundreds of families.
The mattanza is the final stage of tuna fishing that is practiced with the traps, a complex of fixed networks fell along the path that tuna do from early spring to late summer in search of warm waters and the high degree salinity where to play. And ´divided into rooms that are arranged in rows and communicate with each other by means of doors, also consist of pieces of the network. Tuna repeating from year to year the same route ends up inside the rooms. When the rais (chief of the trap) believes that the number of tuna this is sufficient, and if weather conditions are favorable, the tuna are "induced" to enter the death chamber where they remain trapped. The tonnarotti, on boats that are arranged along the four sides of the chamber, under the command of rais pull up the network. The tuna as the water is lost struggling, colliding violently with each other, are injured. When I am exhausted now they expect the "little groups", the deadly hooks of the fishermen mounted on the rods, which are used to hook the fish and the boats hoisted. Traps "travel" or "forward" are those that capture the tuna during the breeding season (May-June), "return" those that capture the specimens at the end of the period gene (July-August). Whether that Bonagia Favignana tuna are "racing". The mattanza was a bloody and cruel spectacle, the sea turns red, looks like a battlefield. And ´at the same time exciting, and that´s why the viewers out there, even from year to year are becoming more numerous, coming from those places where the struggle for survival seems to be a memory of bygone days. Today along the coast ranging from Alcamo Trapani to Mazara del Vallo of Favignana tuna are operative and that of St. Julian in Bonagia. Quest ´is the last Italian tuna oldest still in business where you can watch the fishing operations, which are often accompanied by singing traditional fishery of yesteryear.
Tuna fishing with nets has ancient origins (he also talks about Homer in the Odyssey); traps operated in virtually all the Italian coasts from Liguria in Trieste (at the end of the nineteenth century were little more than a hundred). Today, more than the Sicilian (this year he resumed his activity also historical trap "return" at Cape Passero in the Syracuse area) a couple of traps are lowered on the west coast of Sardinia.

b&b trapani - ababordo- sicilia

 

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