Fly into Venice in fall of spring, and you may spot huge circles and strange swirls spreading across the waters below. There are the nets of moecanti, fishermen who catch moeche, the softshell crabs living in the Venice Lagoon. For long centuries, they have staked out the crustaceans in this wilder corner of the floating city. Few outsiders imagine Venice as bucolic. Instead, it is synonymous with overtourism, every year, around thirty million visitors swarm into a place of under fifty thousand residents. Burano  a one-square-mile island in the north lagoon  draws thousands of visitors daily. They take a forty-minute waterbus ride from Venice to see the candy-coloured cottages and tipsy, leaning bell tower. The tourists pack all the narrow canal-side walkways and leave chaos and also trash in their wake. Now, some Buranelli - residents are called  are fighting back, making the island a launching ground for popular ecotourism. The fishermen are doubling up on their jobs  casting their nets as well as showing tourists the fragile lagoon and why it needs preserving. Domenico Rossi brings visitors on half-day trips from Burano. He sails his bright red-and-green bragozzo  a traditional trawler boat - out into the emerald waters, showcasing both his way of life and the wildlife of the lagoon. He is proud of his work but he is also aware that in a few years there will not be anyone left doing it. For centuries, fishermen like him have cast their nets across the lagoon twice a year, from March to June and then from October to December. His family has fished since the times of La Serenissima  the Venetian Republic  but the tradition stops with him. Numbers of both crabs and fishermen are sharply declining. When he was a child there were a hundred moecanti on Burano, now there are nineteen. Climate change has raised lagoon temperatures over the last decade, and while the crabs are not endangered, however, fewer of them are swimming into nets. The potential loss of his traditional industry spurred Domenico to start offering tours. He meets guests on Burano and zips them away into the lagoon, slipping through narrow channels where the water is just inches deep, and the larger tourist boats that sail day-trippers around cannot pass. He then sails his passengers to Torcello: the island opposite Burano, famous for its basilica filled with glittering Byzantine mosaics. Today, only a dozen locals remain in Torcello, the fields encircling the basilica are fallow and most other historic buildings have fallen into ruin. 
