It is not uncommon for Shannon and I to stop at our favorite fish store on the way home from the base and pick up some swordfish steaks. At the pescaria they have a whole swordfish, sometimes longer than I am tall, lying on the table.
Shannon tells the old how many kilos she wants cut into how many steaks at a certain thickness. Then the old man takes his cleaver and expertly hacks the order off the fish, right before your eyes. How else are you going to know it’s fresh?Sicilians believe their waters
have the tastiest swordfish in the world. People have been fishing these waters for pesce spada, as they call it, for thousands of years. In Aci Trezza, where we live, they celebrate their patron saint, Saint John the Baptist, with the Pesce Spada festival.
The festival includes processions with bands, religious statues and artifacts but people come from all around for the “U Pisci a Mari.”The U Pisci a Mari is a ritual where fishermen go through the motions of fishing for the pesce spada. They dress up in
costumes and come out in a brightly painted boat (they still use these boats every day) and go through the act of hunting for a pesce spada. In this ritual a man slips into the water from the pier and plays the part of the fish. As the men in the boat search for a fish people in the crowd are yelling to the men trying to aid in the hunt. When at last the fish is spotted the men spear at the fish with their harpoons. It is eventually skewered and they haul the fish (man) on to the boat and proceed to take a fake cleaver and hack at the fish. It is a gory scene because they use a lot of fake blood and there is a lot of hacking and sawing. Somehow the fish escapes and they repeat the scene over again only the next time the fish is caught the fish capsizes the boat and swims away forever. The ritual is meant to symbolize man's eternal struggle against nature for survival.We took a video of the fish on the boat. To view the 1 minute video click the picture below.
