The documentary analyses the condition of contemporary European small-scale fisheries from the perspective of the two small fishing communities of the islands of Lampedusa and Fuerteventura. Along the European coasts, artisanal and small-scale fisheries struggle to survive squashed simultaneously by EU fishery legislation that jeopardizes fishers’ livelihood on the one side, and industrial fisheries’ overfishing that severely impoverishes fishing grounds on the other.

 

Focusing exclusively on Lampedusa, the first two chapters expose the problems that the local small-scale fishery suffer due to the implementation of EU Common Fishery Policy’s directives and the impact of decades of subsidized industrial fishery. Interviewees - mainly non-islanders fishers working seasonally on the Italian island - expose how the ban of specific fishing techniques, the low profitability of fish markets, the pressing taxation and the presence of large boats damaging the seabed and depleting Mediterranean fish stocks, negatively affect their activities. 

 

The third chapter analyses how in Lampedusa the transformation of a once flourishing fishing island into today’s touristic destination occurred at the expanses of local small-scale fishery. The symbolic turning point of 1986, when the island became the target of Gaddafi alleged missiles attack and went for the first time under the lens of global media and political attention, seems to mark the beginning of the process of intense touristification of this tiny and isolated territory. An island that soon became one of the most symbolic loci of contemporary border regimes, consequent not only to Lampedusa’s geographical coordinates but also to a series of policies, practices and discourses implemented there.

 

Thus, the forth chapter analyses how islanders experience marginality, by looking at how their relation with the Tunisian neighbours transformed parallel to the increasing militarization of the sea surrounding the island. That sea that once acted as a bridge to the nearby North African dryland has now become a frontier, a line drawn into the sea dividing ‘us’ from ‘them’. As Giacomo explains on a short interview, alongside the dramatic transformation of the local socio-economic fabric of this fishing Mediterranean island that turned into today’s touristic destination, the construction of Europe’s external border further marginalized the maritime ethics of mutual support necessary to endure life in the middle of the sea, exacerbating tensions on the island. 

 

Finally, the fifth chapter tells the story of another European border place: the fishing village of Gran Tarajal in the Spanish island of Fuerteventura. Differently from what recorded in Lampedusa, this small community of fishers organized in a Cofradia (Fishermen's Association) and was able to turn local small-scale fishing into an economically and environmentally sustainable work sector. If in Lampedusa the youngest fisher is on his forties and no younger islanders seem to be willing to work as professional fishers, in the small Spanish fishing port professional small-scale fishery attract many young locals.