Trabucco

The trabucco (Italian pronunciation: [traˈbukko] or trabocco; in some southern dialects called travocc) is an old fishing machine typical of the coast of Abruzzi region (specially in the Trabocchi Coast or Costa dei Trabocchi) and also in the coast of Gargano, where it is protected as historical monuments by the homonym National Park. Spread along the coast of southern Adriatic especially in the Italian provinces of Chieti, Campobasso, and Foggia and also in some parts of the coast of southern Tyrrhenian Sea.

A trabucco is a massive construction built from wood, which consists of a platform anchored to the rock by large logs of pine of Aleppo, jutting out into the sea, from where two (or more) long arms called antennae stretch out suspended some feet above the water and supporting a huge, narrow-meshed, net (called trabocchetto).

The morphology of the Gargano coast and of Abruzzo determined the presence of two different types of trabucco: the Garganic trabucco is usually anchored to a rocky platform, longitudinally extended to the coastline, from which the antennae depart.
The variant of Abruzzo and Molise, also called bilancia, often insists on shallower coasts and therefore is characterized by the presence of a platform, transversal to the coast, which is connected by a tight bridge made of wooden boards. A bilancia has just one winch, often electrically operating, even when the sea is perfectly calm. Abruzzo bilancia has also a net much smaller than that of Gargano trabucco, another feature that differentiates the two types is the length and number of antennae, more extensive Gargano (also double that of Abruzzo and Molise) in Termoli balances were more than two antennae, Gargano always two or more.

According with some historians of Apulia, the trabuccco was invented in the region imported from Phoenicians. The earliest documented existence dates back to 18th century, during which Gargano fishermen, during that period sparsely populated, devised an ingenious technique of fishing which wasn't subject to weather conditions in the area. Trabucchi were built in the most prominent promontories jutting nets out to sea through a system of monumental wooden arms: a trabucco allows to fish without having to be submitted to sea conditions using the morphology of Gargano rocky coast.

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Wikipedia