The “piscare”

The “piscare” were, and still are today, the particular points in which the fishermen used to lower the nets and represented the daily goals of the fishermen in the exercise of their fishing activity.

“A name has always been given to every piscara, inspired by the popular imagination, guided by the particular morphological conformations of the rocks or the seabed, by the type of fishing that was practiced, by the memories of particular events handed down in popular tales” .

They were “points well known to fishermen, from the seabed known almost as if the water of the sea was not there, as if the bottom had come to the surface“. The meticulous knowledge of these points was a vital necessity for the fishermen, always attentive to the protection of fishing equipment. In fact, fishing nets and other tools represented an immense heritage for fishermen on which their own and family support depended.

“By tradition everyone had the right to fish on each piscara. There was no piscation of property, but it all depended on how fast the fisherman was to grab one or more piscare. Once the right on the piscara was secured, obviously it had to be kept as long as possible. To preserve it, there was a clear ritual: every evening, at dusk, the fisherman had to lower the nets or even immerse them in the sea, or create a personal signal, often a distinctly recognizable circle of cable that hung from a rock spike, near the piscara“.

“Respecting these rituals, usually a piscara remained occupied by sea storms at sea, when the fisherman was unable to continue with the ritual of lowering the nets every evening“.

(Extract from the book “Piscare, The fishing posts of the south-east coast of Salento” by Agnese Dell’Abate and Carlo Martella, published by Magna Grecia Mare Editore.  The book was produced by CIHEAM Bari and the Magna Grecia Mare Association, in the framework of the territorial cooperation project Interreg Greece Italy 2007-2013 entitled “BIG, Improving governance, management and sustainability of the Natura 2000 provisions in IT and GR”).