Slow Food's Michele Rumiz has posted a ruminative piece about squid fishing on Unije, a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea:
Every November, the island calls its aficionados to fish squid (called lignjada in Croatian). . . . No sounding leads, nets or electronic devices: they fish using togna - line, and totanara as bait. This is why the more than 20 fishermen involved could manage to fish only a little more than 50 kg of squid in 4 hours. It might seem like a lot, but it's nothing compared to an industrial fishery, which would get the same result in a few minutes with a much smaller crew. But in no way would it have the same value for the local community: a collective event, celebrating their own culture and their main resource, the sea, where Unije stands as a guardian.
A quick googling hasn't helped me figure out what totanara means--Select Italy Travel claims it is not a kind of bait, but a term for night squid fishing with unbaited hooks. Confusing! However, I do get to feel pleased for recognizing the Croatian word for squid, since my Ph.D. advisor uses it as his e-mail address.
And what about the Latin name for the squid they're catching? Most likely it's Loligo vulgaris, the common European squid, of which more than 1000 tonnes are caught in the Adriatic every year. If that were spread out evenly over the year (which it isn't) it would be about 3000 kg a day--proving the point that the industrial fishery catches squid way faster than the community fishermen of Unije.
© Hans Hillewaert / CC-BY-SA-3.0
