Shelter Island
Waterfront park with a bronze memorial to a lost tuna fleet and sweeping bay views.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Shelter Island in San Diego opens with a small, unsettling detail on the bronze Tunaman's Memorial: one of the three straining fishermen is missing his fishing line. It traces the statue back to sculptor Franco Vianello, himself a fisherman, and to the Portuguese, Italian, Japanese and Slavic families who built San Diego's tuna fleet from a sandbar raised by navy dredging spoil. You'll hear about the names polished into the memorial's far side, pioneers of the industry alongside men who sailed from this harbor and never came back. Read the inscription at the statue's base before you decide what an empty hand might mean here.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
San Diego Waterfront
Bayfront promenade where a once-mighty tuna fleet gave way to a weekly dockside fish market.
Little Italy
Waterfront district of century-old rowhouses and cafes, born from an immigrant fishing and cannery trade.
Harbor Island
Man-made bayfront peninsula of boulder shoreline and marinas, built from harbor dredgings for Navy ships.
Public Art "Embracing Peace"
Twenty-five-foot bronze recreation of a famous wartime embrace, cast from a photograph its own subject called forced.
Maritime Museum of San Diego
Iron-hulled tall ship from eighteen sixty-three, saved from the scrapyard and still sailing once a year.
Mission Bay
Man-made aquatic park built by dredging a tidal marsh once harvested for shellfish and fish.