SEINING ALONG CHESIL: VOICES FROM A DORSET FISHING COMMUNITY

For hundreds of years, fishing communities along the Dorset coast lived from the shoals of mackerel that migrate between May and October, fishing the traditional way, with seine nets in shallow waters and pulling bumper catches ashore. The stories, photographs and recordings collected here give a vivid picture of a way of life that has largely disappeared. We hear of family gatherings on the beach, and of men and women who lived for the fishing and whose intimate local knowledge, gleaned over a lifetime and passed down over the generations, were essential to their livelihoods. These voices echo through time to tell us about people who were completely connected to place and who lived by 'the ways of beach'.