FISH TOURISM
Students: Haidar Michelle, Pekşen Tezer, Caterina Di Simone, Comazzetto Anna, Arab Christina“Share your day with a fisherman: accompany him during his daily fishing, listen to him illustrating gestures repeated throughout a lifetime, daydream in front of views that you can only appreciate from the water” .
Even if pesca-tourism/ ichthyo-tourism is still a quite new activity in the panorama of the tourism industry (we started talking about it only nearly twenty years ago), Italy provides different successful cases.
Both in the West and in the East coastline different Italian regions showed their interest in fisheries-based tourism and, looking at the economics of fish tourism and commercial fishing, there are five significant areas:
1- Ligurian Sea: 44 Sample Boats – Fish Tourism daily income 330 Euro – Commercial Fishing daily income 215 Euro
2- Sardinian Waters (Sardinia): 16 Sample Boats – Fish Tourism daily income 535 Euro – Commercial Fishing daily income 309 Euro
3- Tyrrhenian Sea (Tuscany,Island of Elba, Sicily, Egadi and Eolie islands): 28 Sample Boats – Fish Tourism daily income 491 Euro – Commercial Fishing daily income 169 Euro
4- Adriatic Sea (Venetian Lagoon, Abruzzo, Puglia): 15 Sample Boats – Fish Tourism daily income 357 Euro – Commercial Fishing daily income 420 Euro
5- Ionian Sea: 15 Sample Boats – Fish Tourism daily income 474 Euro – Commercial Fishing daily income 147 Euro
Those numbers belong to 2012, yet even the number of registered boats has decreased over the years for many reasons the amount of money that each ship makes has increased.
It’s important to underline that the companies and fishermen who wanted to embark on this new activity are highly supported by the local FLAGs (Fisheries Local Action Group), for instance by organizing “seminars concentrating on key themes like matching fisheries areas’ assets with potential markets, developing tourism products linked to fisheries, and marketing and sales of fisheries-related tourism”.
(S. Meneghello & E. Mingotto, Int. J. Sus. Dev. Plann. Vol. 11, No. 3 (2016)).
In fact, fishing tourism can provide this historicallyweak sector with additional support for its subsistence.⟮…⟯ During the pandemic (Covid19), without this type of solution, our industry would have suffered much more financially; though we managed to maintain more or less our standard of living and our expectations of improvementfor the future”. (Davide Boscolo, owner of the ichthyo-tourism La Dosana)
The attractiveness of fishing tourism has grown over the years, first involving local people and then international tourists
References
Impacts of Fish Tourism Eduardo Bessa, Fernanda Silva José Sabino https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-58331-0_5
Fishing tourism in Italy Michele Romanelli, Eleonora Meliadò https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964569121003690
Fisheries and Tourism Creating benefits for the community https://www.aianta.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/FARNET_Fisheries_and_Tourism-9_EN-002.pdf
Benchmark Study on Fishing Tourism https://fit4blue.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ENG_-FIT4BLUE_03_A3_A6_benchmark_study.pdf
Promoting sustainable development through fisheries-related tourism experiences. Benefits from the integration between fisheries and tourism in venetian coastal areas. S. Meneghello & E. Mingotto, Int. J. Sus. Dev. Plann. Vol. 11, No. 3 (2016)
Recreational fishing tourism https://www.veneto.eu/EN/Fishing_tourism/Images Google images