The Ring-Net Fishermen

Publisher: John Donald,1996 ISBN: £ 12.95

The days of hunter-gather fishermen are probably numbered, but they have a rich history. Angus Martin has gathered together hundreds of anecdotes and oral histories from the herring fishermen of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who pioneered ring-net fishing in the Western Isles of Scotland. He deals with the minutiae of every aspect of their everyday lives - how they lived, worked, and relaxed, both afloat and ashore. Did you know that you could fix a break in your clay pipe with your own freshly drawn blood?

The evolution of the law intended to regulate their work, and the difficulties of its enforcement, are fully discussed. Sadly, the ring-fishermen have gone. His bleak and bitter conclusion notes that their "abandoned cottages have succumbed to ruination or, more ignominiously, surrendered their history to summer occupants...The natural checks on over-fishing have been steadily assaulted and broken down, fisherman and scientist advancing together on a course of unrelenting destruction". - DWB

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