“We are letting the pond breathe. All the barriers are open. We saw the mullets enter, especially at night and early in the morning, but it is difficult to say how much fish we will have this year, and when we will be able to resume entirely the activity", explains Alberto Porcu, president of the fishermen's cooperative Sant'Andrea of S'Ena Arrubia.
Nature and culture
Nature and culture
The reeds glow in the golden light of the early morning. Around, the metallic gray of dawn still resists, ephemeral. A pool of water surrounds the slender trunk of a young tree, where the small ballast rises to become the path, cut in the furrows of the walkway by a long strip of grass. A flock of lapwings passes floating in its soft hesitations.
The small off-road vehicle enters the track that runs along the banks of the Mistras lagune. Reeds, willows, bushes and a shady tunnel of pines parade through the window. Then the passage opens into the body of water, lightly blurred by the mistral wind. The pink multitude of flamingos helps to underpin the illusion of immobility. The hide is interrupted by the passage of the osprey, which crosses the cold blue of January flying past the first and second roost.
We step down cautiously, in silence, all on the conductor's side. Behind us an ancient abandoned house and a pine forest. Beyond the screen made up by the cars a slope on which large sheaves of wheat rested in summer, like a scattered monument. The green of the damp grass is interrupted by bushes and dry reeds, more numerous as they approach the pond’s bank.
"Thirty years ago the pond was like a forest. The pine forest as a frame, and all the possible plants here, in the middle. Especially cattail. It was very high, we had created passages to move from one place to another of the fishpond. And the fauna then. Not only the fish, sea and pond were very rich.
With two strokes of the oar “su ciu” detaches from the muddy bottom and directs the bow towards the channel that connects the pond of Santa Giusta to that of Pauli Maiore. The reeds surround the ruins of the Roman bridge and from the shore they accompany the slow muttering of the engine.
From the tower of Sa Mora the irregular spot of the Pond of Sal'e ’Porcus flattens into a strip, and the rows of houses of S’Arena Scoada almost touch the banks in the splendid deception of perspective.