There’s a 70-kilometre stretch of the Abruzzo coastline known as ‘La Costa dei Trabocchi’. It’s a place where the Adriatic Sea meets the land in a series of low cliffs and coves, and it’s where you find the traditional fishing platforms called trabocchi.

From a distance, trabocchi resemble large, strange creatures standing just off shore. The timber platforms are supported from below by skinny wooden legs. Above, more poles poke out like antennas or feelers set at crazy angles. The whole thing is connected to the land by a rickety-looking ‘tail’. Structurally a trabocco would seem scarcely able to withstand a strong breeze, let alone survive a decent storm.

Trabocchi have been documented along this coastline since at least the 18th century. Apparently they were driven into existence by necessity; it’s said that poor seasons and failed crops forced Abruzzese farmers to find a way to harvest from the ocean. These people were not seafarers, so the trabocchi enabled them to fish from deeper water, without the risk of taking to boats.

The process worked like this; fine nets (trabocchetto) attached to the top poles were lowered into the sea by winches. The fishermen then watched the movement of fish from above, raising the nets at just the right time to trap their catch.

The trabocchi were designed to be flexible, to move with the wind and the tides. It was an approach that, for the most part, protected the structures. Over the years, though, many have disappeared. Today only about fifteen remain and all of those have been rebuilt to some degree.

And all but one are still owned by descendants of those original fishermen. Most trabocchi are no longer ‘working’, more effective fishing methods having long since taken over. But some have been given a new life, transformed into restaurants serving seafood still taken from the waters in which they stand.