From stone to Fernez: the coexistence and development of fishing techniques for commercial sponges in the Eastern Mediterranean during the interwar period ; De la pierre au Fernez : coexistence et évolution des techniques de pêche des éponges commerciales en Méditerranée orientale durant l'entre-deux-guerres

Abstract

still has a strong cultural identity, and sponge fishing is part of a very old past in the Mediterranean. It can be traced more than 2500 years ago in this inner-sea 1. Stimulated by the new needs of the industrial revolution, this sector of the fisheries economy is growing strongly and peaked in the last decades of the nineteenth century2. However, this growth seems paradoxical. It is technically at odds with developments in the other sectors of the fishing economy in the Mediterranean at the present time. Subject to homogenisation processes driven by the discovery of new material, Mediterranean fishing, like that of the small pelagic species revolutionised by the advent of the purse seine, has seen a tightening of its fishing practices in the period between the two wars. Marginalisation of the oldest processes is the most remarkable consequence. This is not the case with sponge fisheries, which coexist in the 20th century with multi-layered and new gear derived from mechanisation and engineering. The origins of this singularity are currently being questioned. It is sought to highlight the limitations of the mechanisation process of this fishery, regardless of whether these limits are of a human or ecological nature. Italian documentary collections of the General Administration of Dodecanese (1912-1943), currently kept by the public archives of Rhodes, provide a concrete illustration of the complex and plural organisation of a fishing campaign through the example of the Kalymnos fleet. These funds provide knowledge of the actors involved in its financing, its technical implementation and its physical progress. ; International audience ; still has a strong cultural identity, and sponge fishing is part of a very old past in the Mediterranean. It can be traced more than 2500 years ago in this inner-sea 1. Stimulated by the new needs of the industrial revolution, this sector of the fisheries economy is growing strongly and peaked in the last decades of the nineteenth century2. However, this growth seems ...