Seining Along Chesil by Sarah Acton

The living history in this book is alive, just out of reach as the voices linger, reaching us on underwater sea-bright paths.

This book of recordings, voices and remembering tells the collective story of seine-net fishing off the Dorset coast, a culture and community that thrived for hundreds of years as the seasonal runs of mackerel swam along Chesil Beach between May and October. This is fishing the traditional way, seine nets thrown in shallow water from open wooden boats run by tightly-knit crews. Although fish and seining have been in decline over the last fifty years, Seining Along Chesil gives us a vivid glimpse of how lerrets, bumper catches and the camaraderie of intergenerational crews made life rich, busy and exciting. It is also the story of how villages and communities were not only bound in communal, seasonal activity, but formed their own language and identity through their relationship to the fish and the sea. These stories pass on a living tradition through time – of fishermen and families in pursuit of adventure, pitted against the elements, money and food, completely connected to their place and people through working, loving and understanding the sea.

Paperback, illustrated throughout

Out now.