Shelter Island

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.