In 1875, about 30 miles off the coast of Sciacca, Sicily, fishermen discovered a coral bank. But this coral was of a strange orange color, very different from what was normally found in the area. Stranger still was the fact that an enormous quantity of this coral was simply piled in great mounds in a very small area of the sea bed. News of the discovery quickly spread and teeming number of prefessional coral fishermen rushed to the area from everywhere, primarily to Torre del Greco. When it seemed that the bank was completely depleted, a second even larger bank was discovered, and then a third, larger still. The fishing went on for over twenty years, until the end of the century. But rather than fishing this was harvest. A unique, exceptional, unrepeatable event.
It was calculated that over 14,000 tons of coral were extracted from these banks.
Numerous scientists of the era were assigned to study the phenomenon, to try to understand the reason for all that coral and if such massive harvesting could damage its eventual reproduction in the same area. The answer was always the same; the coral was there because of a volcano located in the same area. A volcano that a few years prior had erupted into a island, the Isola Ferdinandea, the island that never was. It was all dead coral, and such it could not reproduce.
No one ever wondered why there was such a massive amount of coral in that site, nor how an organic matter like coral could be preserved in spite of such high temperatures.
No on, that is, until now.
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