The trabocco is an ancient fishing machine, typical of the Abruzzo area and protected as a monumental heritage in the Costa dei Trabocchi. Similar to a pile-dwelling on the sea, it is characterized by a dense branching of Aleppo pine wood (Acacia wood), resistant to saltiness, such that it resembles a real sea creature. The term “Trabocco” comes from trabocchetto, or ‘trap,’ due to the type of fishing. Placed where the sea has a suitable depth, it is built close to rocky points in order to take favorable advantage of currents. It consists of a gangway and a central body from which extend two wooden arms called ‘antennas’ to which is attached a narrow-mesh net that is lowered and hoisted through winches. The fisherman, always on the alert, would intercept schools of fish moving along the gorges of the coast. After that he would dip the net and pull it up with the “spoils.” Some historians propose the origin of the Trabocco at the time of the Phoenicians, others attribute it to the settlement of Jewish families in the Adriatic coast, around the end of the 18th century. Certainly the most reliable one grounds the birth of the Trabocco in about 1700, when, following large-scale clearing of the Teatine coastline to make way for cultivation. Most of the inhabitants of the coastal villages were made up of farmers who, being afraid of the open sea, out of necessity built the trabocchi and began to engage in fishing, eliminating the unknowns associated with the use of the boat. Over time, the trabocchi have had an economic function, which in past centuries made them the main source of livelihood for entire families, later gaining the role of a cultural symbol and tourist attraction.