agostino petroni

At dusk, a man pulled a jam-packed net from the Ionian Sea into a speed boat headed for Taranto, a city in Puglia, Italy. He’d make a few hundred euros off the catch if he could get it into the right hands without being spotted. His cargo was about 110 pounds of wiggly, slimy sea cucumbers, or—as they are locally called in Italy—“poop of the sea.”

Arturo Casale, 65, got word of the man’s fishing expedition later that day in the form of a photo. It was too late to catch the thief. As the founder of an environmental nonprofit called Mare Per Sempre (“Sea Forever”), Casale is known locally as

Three years ago, Laura Gaither and her family spent their summer vacation in Panama City Beach, Florida. One afternoon, while rinsing sand off her feet, the 35-year-old Alabama resident felt something biting her legs and noticed tiny black bugs on her skin. Gaither brushed them away, and later, when she described the bites to local residents, they told her that she had likely been bitten by sand flies.
Three of Gaither’s five kids had been bitten too, but she didn’t worry. The marks on their ...

Bright fluorescent lights shone on Raffaella Marongiu Selis’s pale hands as she poured water into a wide earthenware bowl. Before her, in a cold farmhouse on the Italian island of Sardinia, 12 women held their breath while Selis added flour to the mix. They had waited years, if not decades, to learn how to make su filindeu, one of the world’s rarest pastas. Selis was one of the few women who inherited the recipe and was about to share it publicly for the first time.

The recipe calls for only ...

Italy’s tourism industry, which took a heavy battering from Covid-driven travel restrictions, is now faced with the loss of one of its most popular natural attractions.

In Italy’s Puglia region, ancient olive trees have been plagued by a devastating bacteria — and an anti-science movement that has spread misinformation.
ON A COOL NIGHT in April 2018, my then 23-year-old brother, Stefano Petroni, drove a rusty camper into one of Puglia’s oldest olive fields. He killed the headlights and moved slowly through the trees, their ancient silhouettes outlined by a bright moon. The historic olive groves, once loud with the singing of leaves in the wind, were leafless...

Manaure, ColombiaRita Uriana stooped to examine the stringy green plants covering the oasis in the Colombian desert. As the sun flared, she picked the pods and placed them in the fold of her yellow dress, knowing these beans are part of an agricultural revival that could feed hundreds of families in her desert-dwelling community.
In the past, this simple crop fed many more families in the Guajira desert. The Wayuu, descendants of the indigenous Arawak, live scattered across this dry territory...

hree years ago, Laura Gaither and her family spent their summer vacation in Panama City Beach, Florida. One afternoon, while rinsing sand off her feet, the 35-year-old Alabama resident felt something biting her legs and noticed tiny black bugs on her skin. Gaither brushed them away, and later, when she described the bites to local residents, they told her that she had likely been bitten by sand flies.
Three of Gaither’s five kids had been bitten, too, but she didn’t worry. The marks on their ...

In early 2016, Giovanni Melcarne, an agronomist and the owner of an extra virgin olive oil farm in Gagliano del Capo, walked through the southern Italian countryside of Puglia. He was with a fellow olive-oil farmer who had called and told him there was something he had to see.

The two approached a centuries-old olive tree growing at the edge of the street along a traditional stone wall. All around, the old olive trees that covered the red clay were either dead or in an advanced state of decay...

Naples has pizza, Rome has cacio e pepe and Sicily has cannoli. Arguably Italy's most famous dessert, cannoli are proudly displayed in nearly every Sicilian cafe and pasticceria, honoured on the island's official website and immortalised by Sicilians in The Godfather with the famous line, "Leave the gun, take the cannoli."
But if you've ever seen a cannolo and thought, "yup, it looks like one," you're not alone. The beloved Sicilian sweet does indeed resemble a phallus – and for good reason.
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After a three-year investigation into two organised crime groups in Italy’s Campania region that included wire taps, surveillance and nearly 100 suspects, police cracked down with a dozen arrests in March – not for offences linked to drugs or prostitution, but for the illegal harvesting of a small mollusc.

Known as date mussels, Lithophaga lithophaga are cigar-shaped shellfish that make their homes inside limestone, secreting an acid that slowly carves out a tunnel in the rock. They take deca...

n 1981, Adam Tolmach planted a five-acre vineyard on land he had inherited from his grandfather in the wine-growing region of Ventura County, California, a few miles east of Santa Barbara. As an undergraduate, Tolmach had studied grape growing and winemaking (areas of study known as viticulture and enology, respectively) and then worked for a couple of years at a winery not far from his grandfather’s land. In 1983, he started producing his own wines, which he sells under the Ojai Vineyard lab...

Martina Ezcurra sprinkled coarse salt on the large flank steak in front of her, then massaged it in with her hands. With a smile, she told me that even if men claim to be the asador (South American barbecue master), it is Argentine women who prepare the best meat.
Next to the seasoned steak on the marble kitchen table stood a bowl filled with the chimichurri she had prepared earlier that morning: a blend of finely chopped parsley, oregano, ground chilli and minced garlic mixed with vinegar an...

One man’s mission to save a dying coral reef in Cuba
Soy músico, poeta, y loco.
“I am a musician, a poet, and crazy” is a common saying in Cuba when somebody finds creative solutions to a problem. That’s how Reinaldo Borrego Hernández, who goes by Nene, describes himself and his work to save the coral reef near his childhood home.
Nene grew up in the 1980s in Cocodrilo, a small coastal village on the Isle of Youth in western Cuba. Nene’s family was poor; the only games he could play were with...

In October 2016, then-33-year-old Italian Yuri Basilicò was hiking across the island of Corsica, France, solo, when he got lost in the fog. Basilicò heard a donkey braying in the distance and followed the sounds with the hope of finding the path. Instead, he met three Sweedish hikers, who were also lost. As they waited for the weather to improve, they shared a meal, and before parting, one of the Swedes asked Basilicò, “Do you know Sentiero Italia?” Basilicò had never heard of it.
Sentiero It...

The first time you see a burrata sitting on a plate, tilted, you might be perplexed. Burrata is as white as mozzarella but comes with a strange narrowing at the top, like a giant dumpling. With a knife and fork, you poke the pouch, knowing something hides below that initial cheese layer. With a firm stroke, you cut the sachet in two, and the filling made of cream and mozzarella strips spills out and spreads across the plate. You roll the mozzarella strips with your fork like spaghetti, and wi...