2ovar24, 9.42 ogal Teawlers Acw No Match for Undersea Sculptures |WIRED
RISTAN KENNEDY SCTENCE MAR 18, 2026 11:56 PM
The Undersea Art Gallery That Ensnares
Illegal Trawlers
Trailing weighted nets across the seabed wrecks fish stocks and kills
carbon-capturing seagrasses—but one fisherman’s sculpture project has
turned the tide.
PHOTOGRAPH: CARLO BONAZZA/CASA DET PESCI
tipsilinww.wired.comistorylunderwater-sculptures-stopping-trawling ana2ovar24, 9.42 legal Trawlers Ave No Match for Undersea Seulptures | WIRED
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IT’S 7 AM, and a thin layer of mist still hovers over the harbor in Talamone as
fisherman Paolo Fanciulli stretches out his nets. Pulling them out of a plastic tub,
he examines them section by section, setting the ripped ones aside to be repaired.
It's a time-consuming process—one that’s occupied men from this tiny village on
the coast of Tuscany for centuries. But in recent years, Fancuilli has spent more
time working on ways to protect fish than on catching them.
The problems started, he explains, with the arrival of large-scale industrial
trawlers in the 1980s. Trailing chain-weighted nets, these boats scraped the
seabed bare, scooping up not just fish but all manner of plants and sea creatures
Known as “bottom trawling,” the practice is illegal within three nautical miles of
Italy's coastline, but that hasn't stopped some unscrupulous operators from
carrying on regardless
You see, these are like the nets the apostles used,” Fanciulli says, gesturing to his
own equipment. “When you put them in the sea, the holes are big, and they only
catch the adult fish,” allowing the ecosystem to thrive. “It’s sustainable fishing” he
says. By contrast, bottom trawling endangers not just the future of local fish
stocks, but the existence of one of Europe's most important carbon sinks.
Just offshore from Talamone lie large meadows of Posidonia oceania, an
underwater seagrass that absorbs more carbon dioxide per hectare than the
Amazon rain forest. “We used to see these big boats—always 10, 20 at once, and
when they took away the seabed, they also took away the meadows of Posidonia,”
says Fanciulli.
Today, the waters off Talamone are calm, and the seagrass is slowly recovering—a _
change that's largely due to Fanciulli himself. After years of battling the bottom
trawlers, he hit upon a solution that's both elegant in its simplicity and beautiful
to look at. Beneath the surface of the bay lie 39 sculptures made of white carrara
marble. Carved by leading artists, including British sculptor Emily Young, these
hulking blocks are arranged in such a way that they would snag the nets of any
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trawler that tried to encroach on this zone. The result is Casa dei Pesci—the home
of the fish—a unique underwater art gallery that protects both the local
ecosystem and the wider environment,
Since the first blocks of marble were sunk in 2015—and rapidly colonized by fish
and plants— the gallery has grown steadily. Managing it and fundraising has
become almost a full-time job for Fanciulli. “I am still, first and foremost, a
fisherman,” he says. “But I understand that if I just take from the sea and don't
give back, I won't be able to fish anymore.”
PHOTOGRAPH: CARLO BONAZZA/CASA OET PESCT
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF Casa dei Pesci represents the realization of a long-
held dream for Fanciulli. Tall and tanned at 62, with bright blue eyes, a firm,
calloused handshake, and the industrious energy of a border collie, he’s been
fishing ever since he left school at 13. “I'd always loved shipwrecks and artifacts in
the sea,” he says. But it was only in 2006 that he realized underwater sculptures
might also serve a practical purpose. He set up Casa dei Pesci as a not-for-profit
organization the following year. “I felt [the sea god] Poseidon calling me to help,”
he says poetically, but when he started to explore the practicalities of his plan, he
discovered science was on his side too.
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“The role of seagrasses as natural climate solutions has been recognized and
understood only recently,” explains Peter Macreadie, associate professor of
environmental science at Deakin University in Australia. Around 10 years ago, he
says, scientists working on seagrass meadows, mangrove forests, and tidal
marshes coined a new term—blue carbon—to describe the disproportionally large
amount of carbon that these ecosystems store. In a 202] paper Macreadie
estimated that if seagrasses were protected and restored around the world, they
could draw down the equivalent of 1 percent of total global emissions each year
by 2030—roughly half the output of the entire international aviation sector.
In Europe, Posidonia oceanica plays a particularly important role, says Christine
Pergent-Martini, an associate professor at the University of Corsica, who
specializes in coastal ecosystems. She is the lead author of a separate 2021 paper
examining the plant's potential as a carbon sink. “It’s what we call an engineer
species—it provides the basis for an ecosystem with several thousand other
species of mollusc, arthropod, fish, and so on,” she says. But Posidonia meadows
also sit atop what is known as a matte—a mass of roots and sediment that can be
up to 8 meters deep. “It’s very rich in organic matter, very rich in carbon, and it
can sequester carbon for a very long time,” she says—potentially thousands of
years
While it’s not known exactly how much Posidonia oceanica grows in the
Mediterranean, the most recent estimates by Pergent-Martini and her colleagues
—extrapolated using a mixture of drone imagery, aerial photography, and side-
scan sonar—suggest it covers around 2.3 million hectares of seabed: an area the
size of Wales, The plant’s ability to absorb CO, through photosynthesis is roughly
the same as a forest, “with 5 tons of CO equivalent per hectare, per year,” she
says. But while a typical forest would only lock away about 5 percent of this CO
each year through sequestration, a Posidonia bed can lock in 20 to 25 percent,
she says. “So the carbon sequestration is five times more important, per hectare,
in a Posidonia meadow than in a forest.”
nitps:lvwwwied.comistoryfunderwater-sculptures-stopping trawling! ana2ovar24, 9.42 legal Trawlers Ave No Match for Undersea Seulptures | WIRED
PHOTOGRAPH: CARLO BONAZZA/CASA EI PESCI
As a carbon sink, seagrass has other advantages too. It's unlikely to catch fire and
release large quantities of carbon back into the atmosphere at once, for example.
But it is vulnerable to other threats. Increased coastal erosion can muddy the
waters, making it more difficult for Posidonia to photosynthesize. Cruise ships
dropping anchor can cause untold damage. And, of course, bottom-trawlers can
ravage thousand-year-old meadows in a matter of minutes.
Drag-net trawling causes most damage to the plant itself, says José Miguel
Gonzalez-Correa, a professor in marine sciences at the University of Alicante, in
Spain. But drag nets can easily damage the matte too, he says, causi
be released by bacterial action, and increasing CO, levels.” Restoring Posidonia
‘arbon to
meadows can be a long process, he says. In a paper comparing trawler-damaged
meadows to their healthy neighbors, he estimates they might take as much as 100
years to recover fully. Preservation, he concludes, is better than restoration, and
creating anti-trawling reefs—by sinking well-spaced obstacles like Paolo
Fanciulli’s Casa dei Pesci sculptures—is one of the simplest and most cost-
effective ways of protecting Posidonia.
DESPITE ALL THESE recent scientific studies backing up his approach, however,
Fanciulli has never received any government funding. In fact, he’s universally
scathing about those in authority, lambasting the EU for its fishing subsidies,
which he claims only encourage bad practices, and lampooning the local
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coastguard for their inability—or unwillingness—to enforce the laws against
bottom trawling. “They do nothing,” he says.
On occasion in the 1990s, he said, he took it on himself to police the waters off
Talamone. “The coastguard always used to use a big light on their boats, so what
did I do? I put one on my boat,” he chuckles. “Think about it, three in the morning,
you're fishing illegally, you see a light coming towards you, what would you do?
You'd run away” And they did, he says, but they'd always come back—until he
started sinking his statues. Casa dei Pesci has now placed enough anti-trawling
obstacles to reach from Porto Santo Stefano to the Ombrone River—a distance of
some 20 nautical miles, or 37 km—meaning that some 137 km? of Posidonia
meadow and fish habitat are now protected. “It’s small,” says Fanciulli, But it’s still
remarkable given the lack of any official backing or funds.
“What we do here, we do entirely with the money that we raise and donations,”
says Fanciulli. Early on in the project's genesis, after sinking a few test blocks of
concrete, he was lucky enough to meet the director of the Cave di Michelangelo,
the quarry where the famous Florentine sculptor sourced his stone. “I asked him
to give me two blocks of marble. He gave me 100.”
The sculptors, similarly, were friends of friends who offered their time to the
cause for free. “Initially, there were five main artists, but the project quickly grew,”
explains Giorgio Butini, an artist whose work now sits on the seabed. An
established sculptor from Florence, he would normally expect to sell a
comparably sized work for between €50,000 and €60,000 ($49,500-$59,500),
but he has been happy to contribute several pieces. His latest, called Giovinezza
(or “Youth”), is the first of a planned three-part series called Past, Present, Future
that Casa dei Pesci is currently crowdfunding to put into place further up the
coast—because while the sculptors might offer up their time and tools for free,
moving the sculptures around isn’t cheap
British sculptor Emily Young, arguably the best known of the artists
internationally, was introduced to Fanciulli because she owns a studio nearby.
Initially, she was impressed by his energy and enthusiasm. “He's really, really
focused, he’s sort of heroic. I think he sleeps almost no hours,” she says. But she
was also fascinated, on an artistic level, by the gallery's longer-term legacy and
what the sculptures will say to future generations. “That’s something I think about
nitps:lvwwwied.comistoryfunderwater-sculptures-stopping trawling! ena2orae4, 942 legal Tears Avw No Maleh for Undersea Sculptures | WIRED
a lot in my work. When you work with stone, you're leaving something for the
future,” she says. “We're altering the Earth very profoundly, and some of the
things we're leaving are very destructive—but they can also be very beautiful and
poignant.”
She hopes that, “in the fullness of time, people won't even know what these
sculptures were. They will be covered in plants and Posidonia—and that will be
the sign that the project is working.” In the shorter term, there’s no doubt her
work has helped raise the profile of Fanciulli's cause. “Already I get emails from
people saying: ‘We're going on a dive, can you tell us more about your sculptures
so we know what we're looking at?” says Young. And as more and more artworks
have been added to the gallery, word of the project has spread. Recently, the
outdoor clothing brand Patagonia decided Casa dei Pesci met its high standards
for grant recipients, and awarded a grant of €13,000 ($12,800). A German
charitable foundation has promised €15,000 ($14,800). But most of the money
still comes from fundraisers that Fanciulli runs himself.
ON AN UNSEASONABLY warm Sunday at the end of October, Fanciulli can be
found sweating through his camouflage T-shirt while he mans three BBQs at
once. The previous night's catch—amberjack, dolphin fish, some red snapper—is
being grilled fresh off the boat, with a simple mix of salt and rosemary, for the 40
guests who have paid to join the fundraiser and enjoy a delicious three-course
meal in the process.
Although ably assisted by his wife in the kitchen, his daughter at the tables, and a
couple of friends, Fanciulli still seems to be doing everything—flipping the fish,
pouring the wine, and chatting with his guests about his next initiative: a home for
octopuses, made up of a gallery of hand-painted amphora—narrow Roman jars
with handles and pointed bottoms. The only time he stops is to give his
presentation, showing photos of broken Posidonia stems and the havoc wreaked
by bottom trawlers. Seated at long tables, his guests are listening rapt as he tells
them: “If you want to eat well, you have to defend the environment. It's like a
war.”
As the lunch wraps up and his guests depart, Fanciulli finally sits down. There
were times over the past 30 years, he admits, where he'd felt like he was fighting
a lonely, losing battle. “I've been threatened by trawlers, I've been threatened by
nitps:lvwwwied.comistoryfunderwater-sculptures-stopping trawling! 742orae4, 942 legal Tears Avw No Maleh for Undersea Sculptures | WIRED
institutions, but I always told the truth. For a long time, no one listened to me,” he
says, but now, with public opinion swinging behind him, both locally and
internationally, his message finally seems to be getting through.
Reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 will require innovative solutions at a global
scale. In this series, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet initiative,
WIRED highlights individuals and communities working to solve some of our
most pressing environmental challenges. It’s produced in partnership with Rolex,
but all content is editorially independent. Find out more.
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