More than fifteen years ago when I started my field research on the maritime communities of the Calabrian coast (Southern Italy) I met an old fisherman heir of an ancient tradition, a way of life, together with an unshakable sense of ethics. Francesco Polistena deceased on 'April 1997 at the age of 93 years, honored with the respect of all the fishermen of the Strait of Messina. Reputed sword-fish harpooner and skipper sitting on the seashores of Scilla, he patiently taught me his language, his art, his vision of life, his world and its secrets. Once, in one of our long and marvelous conversations he recognized that he learned himself all his knowledge, the art of the «Halieutical Res (things of fishes)» from his grandfather bearing the same Christian name: Francesco. A respected sea man indeed in his times that many called the «architect of the sea» because out of his great experience he was appointed by the community to rule upon the use of different tools, gears ad technics at the appropriate times of the year and to wisely solve as an undisputed judge, the always possible conflicts stemming at the assignment of fishing areas before the starting of the actual swordfish catching season.

«Padre Ciccio» as familiarly but respectfully was called my Francesco Polistena carried on I his early eighties when I happened to meet him, the principles and tasks embodied by his grandfather according to which «le cose del mare» the things from the sea, for which the fisherman is longing are not free but must be ruled to the advantage of all. From my research in the Mediterranean no other Halieutical experience, seems more fulfilled, more successfully organized as the sword fish hunting in the strait of Messina. This last one constitutes a good testing ground of the idea expressed by E.Ostrom (1992, 313) according to which «if people have lived in a close relationship with a relatively small common pool resource system, they have probably evolved some procedure to limit and regulate use patterns». No doubt that behind the local expression «the sea of Scilla» there was for me the promise to discover a sort of architecture of the sea, a lesson contributing to understand the underlying of a regulated modality of appropriation of nature's gifts, possibly reproduced fro its Phoenicians dawn during more than three thousand years (Collet 1995).

This is the true value of the heritage that I came to explore: the way by which a Hunters-Fishermen Community has exploited its nature-born resources through millennia without bringing them to exhaustion. A wisdomful sense of ecological responsibility? Perhaps it is more proper here to see the positive effect which results from the concatenation of limiting procedures governing the hunting process. In any case a kind of responsibility, advocated by the Code of conduct for responsible fisheries. (FAO 1995) (1) Anyhow the Sea Architecture invented by the sword fish hunters to rule their local Halieutical common, might for sure share its paradigmatical value also with other fishermen, hunting other preys in other seas.