Pirate Hunters of the Po

 

As night falls in Italy’s largest delta, volunteers board tiny boats to track down the elusive fish mafia plundering the waters.

During the day Denny Covezzi works in a fishing equipment shop and Andrea Mocchi at at a factory. But at sunset they don heavy grey uniforms and berets and set out on their small boat to patrol the river.

The pirate hunters, as they are known in the local media, are looking for poachers on the delta of the Po River in Italy. Emptying into the Adriatic Sea, the brackish Po has one of Europe’s largest deltas, but until recently it has been plagued by poachers.

Illegal fishing has a long history in the area, but until the 1960s it was largely done by poor families who lived off eels. In recent years, however, organised criminal groups ramped it up to an industrial level, using intimidation and a network of lookouts. They can fish as much as 20,000kg (20 tonnes) in a single night, an ecological disaster.