“Free man, you will always cherish the sea!” So wrote Baudelaire in Fleurs du mal.

Take a good look at the condition of the sea today, consider the predictions that relentlessly continue to predict alarming scenarios, and you might suspect that free men who cherish the sea are few and far between these days. But many of those men and women who do cherish the sea will be in Genoa this April 17-20, brought together by Slow Fish.

We want to do more than just sound a clear and strong warning – though the predictions coming from authoritative scientific sources are deeply worrying. More than anything, Slow Fish is about education, giving people answers and suggesting how we can all do our bit to preserve this immense ecosystem, indispensable to our lives, starting with our food choices. The focus of the event will be on all those small, everyday actions with which we can help improve our rivers and seas.

Knowledge and awareness are the event’s key words. Slow Fish provides an enjoyable and fascinating way, enlivened by a healthy curiosity, to learn more about an issue of global proportions. At Slow Fish we will start by focusing our attention on the Mediterranean basin, the cradle of our civilization and a sea that brings together many different cultures. An ecosystem in delicate balance, it is suffering from increasingly disturbing changes which are happening rapidly and proving hard to contain. The sea needs all our attention, and it needs us to think in new ways, so that we can free ourselves from increasingly harmful habits.

It is easy to say that we love the sea, but it’s not the same as taking care of it. With Slow Fish you can find out how every one of us can make great things happen by taking small, simple steps, changes that never deny opportunities for pleasure and well-being, but instead offer us more.