Italian fisherman sinks illegal trawlers with 'other-worldly' underwater sculptures

Italian fisherman Paolo Fanciulli heads out daily along the wild expanse of the Maremma coastline in search of mullet and sea bream. He has been fishing these waters off Tuscany for over 40 years but, until recently, is forced to share them with a dangerous counterpart.

In the late 1980s, Fanciulli began to notice the unmistakable signs of illegal trawling. The seabed was becoming barren and fish stocks were rapidly depleting. With livelihoods at stake, Fanciulli felt compelled to act.

And so, in 2013, the underwater “House of Fish” sculpture park was born. His local bay is now safe, but he has already set his sights further up the coastline which remains unprotected.

Along a stretch of Tuscan coastline before the town of Talamone, mammoth stone sculptures now dot the seabed. Made of Carrara marble, the same material that Renaissance master Michelangelo favoured, the artworks are already thickly coated with algae.

Among the sculptures is the monumental head of the Weeping Guardian by British artist Emily Young and the Ittico Obelisco by Massimo Catalani, looking like the remnant of an ancient submerged city.

A total of 39 sculptures now rest on the sea bed, and 12 more are currently being worked on.

Sunken statues have been used in various coastal locations by environmentalists or authorities attempting to revive a dwindling marine population. But the non-profit association Casa dei Pesci, or House of Fish, was the impassioned project of one fisherman, determined to protect a coastline from devastating illegal fishing.

While Fanciulli and the other local fishermen's practices are necessarily sustainable — if they damage the ecosystem they lose their source of income — the bottom trawlers were indiscriminately destroying the