The ninth edition of was inaugurated this morning Slow Fish, in Genoa until Sunday 12 May, the international event dedicated to fish and sea resources, organized by Slow Food, partner of our Festival, and the Liguria Region with the patronage of the Ministry of Agricultural, Food, Forestry and Tourism Policies, the Ministry of the Environment and the Protection of Territorio e del Mare, of the Municipality of Genoa and with the support of the Genoa Chamber of Commerce. An edition very focused on environmental issues and on the role that we consumers can have in protecting this resource, a common good for humanity, finally listening to the appeals of science.
"We researchers would finally like to be heard in our invitations to politics and the economy for a radical paradigm shift," he highlighted Silvio Greco, president of the Slow Fish scientific committee. "We have been sounding the alarm for several years, but we have not seen so many changes. Instead it is time to open our eyes: we can no longer think of the sea as a container, we should start considering it as the extraordinary living organism that it really is. Yet the sea is becoming a dump. Talking about plastic islands - one of them is almost as big as France - is always very impressive, but it is even more impressive to think that the islands are only the 3-5% of the plastic that is in the sea, because most of it is the one that lies deep in the seabed ».
Fishermen, experts, chef researchers and exhibitors gather for four days in the maritime heart of the city to tell, through the universal interpretation of good, clean and fair food, good practices to preserve not only the health of the sea but also the role cheap.
"Perhaps we do not consider that in addition to environmental issues, in addition to our health, the sea also has an important economic value," he says Roberto Danovaro, of the Anton Dohrn zoological station. «The sea increases GDP and offers employment opportunities. We can also give the numbers: the economic value of one hectare of posidonia is 23 thousand euros per year, and in the last decades we have lost the 84% of the algal forest grasslands. It is as if we were transforming a rich forest into a desert: we are losing billions of euros due to our bad management of the sea. But is it possible to manage a territory without knowing it? We are doing it with the sea: we do not know where there are grasslands, which areas are polluted, we are not mapping them: and there is a real need to know, to develop a vocational map of the Italian seas to understand them ».
Paola Del Negro, from the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysicscelebrates today at Slow Fish a great moment, namely the purchase of an icebreaker to carry out research and exploration in the polar seas. "The sea is not a pool where fish swim, but an organism that must be considered as a whole. At the sea of us basically it does not matter, but we should be very interested. Plastics, acidification, climate change: every time we focus on a different alarm, then we move on to the next. This does not mean that we have managed to solve a problem, but that they all insist at the same time. The most recent alarm concerns the presence of alien species in our seas: in the upper Adriatic there is a recent presence of a gelatinous organism, a type of ctenophore that has become a pest, it reproduces at very high speed, and in summer it fills our waters. It is voracious of zooplankton, subtracting food from many fish, such as anchovies, of which it also devours larvae. Fishermen are hit at 100%. We must have the capacity to mitigate problems, because solving them often is no longer possible.
Salvatore Micillo, Undersecretary of the Ministry of the Environment and Protection of the Territory and the Sea: "The sea is a precious resource, which offers great opportunities, and as such must be defended. As Undersecretary for the Environment, I am fortunate to have the mandate to protect the sea and to be able to work at a time when the environment in general, and the protection of the sea in particular, have returned to the center of the Government's action. Today at Slow Fish we also inaugurate the first of a series of meetings within the #IoSonoMare campaign, which we launched in collaboration with ISPRA SNPA to tell citizens about the state of the sea and what the state does for the sea. The marine litter is a serious problem, with serious repercussions also on the food chain, and if we think that also from the marine monitoring data, which we present today, it emerged that about 80% of the waste found at sea and on the beaches is composed of plastic, we understand the extent of the problem. In addition to the large #PlasticFree awareness campaign, the 4 last April was approved in the Council of Ministers the Salva Mare law that will help us save our seas from the environmental disaster to which we were condemning them. Finally the fishermen will be able to bring to shore all the plastic caught (the 50% of the catch), which until today they were forced to throw back into the water, helping us to reduce the presence of waste in the sea. The fishermen who will become "sweepers" of the sea can have an environmental certificate and their catch chain will be adequately recognizable and recognized ".
Giovanni Toti, president of the Liguria Region: "The appointment with Slow Fish is even more important this year, given that there is great attention on environmental issues, which specifically concern Liguria, which with the sea lives, is surrounded by the sea and has taken an important part of the sea his character and his civilization. The sea is a fundamental part of our culture and the conscious use of this extraordinary richness is the theme of this event that unites like all the beautiful events moments of deepening and reflection on the theme in playful moments of leisure and pleasant tasting events of fish dishes ".
"Genoa must become an agora, the house for identifying sea management policies, a permanent space on the themes of Slow Fish that sees institutions, communities that relate to the sea, and the scientific community as protagonists. If this idea finds the support of local and national politics, Genoa could become the place of encounter, dialogue and confrontation. It is the culture that must become the guide of the economy, and a new concept of regeneration of the Mediterranean that restores to the Mare Nostrum a harmonious vision, in harmony with all the subjects that live around the sea ». That is how the president of Slow Food Carlo Petrini, resuming the intervention of theMayor of Genoa Marco Bucci which has appealed to the city's economic forces to establish a permanent Slow Fish meeting point in the Ligurian capital, to develop a blue culture around the sea.
