Epi 78: Environment – How beautiful underwater sculptures near Italy are protecting life under water

Full Episode description

To listen to episode 45 about Marvel characters, please click here
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Paolo Fanciulli, a fisherman who lives in Italy was always fascinated by shipwrecks and the fish and the algae that grew in them. He noticed also how it was getting harder to get any fish while casting his fishing nets thanks to trawling by large fishing companies. He noticed that nobody really cared about how these trawling nets were destroying the marine ecosystem. Apart from catching fish, they also caught a lot of the posidonia (or seagrass) which helped form nests for lobsters, sea bream and red gurnards to lay their eggs.

In this episode, 10-year old Azlaan from Army Public School, Barackpore, India talks about a creative solution that Paolo Fanciulli came up with. He decided to drop a few concrete blocks into the ocean. Next up, he wondered, after all – I live in Italy, the centre of art. So he got some sculptors to carve beautiful giant pieces and dropped these into the ocean as well. These works of art prevented trawling by ripping the nets apart, if they tried scraping the seafloor near the sculptures. 

Azlaan explains how these sculptures not only stop illegal trawling but also help this part of the ocean become a tourist attraction. Tourists could dive and see the beautiful corals and fishes that form on these sculptures and swim around this museum. If given a chance, Azlaan would like to add a spiderman sculpture to this museum. Listen to this episode fully to find out more about the story. 

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