Border Cloth our black-out venue is where artist Catriona Taylor and poet Stuart Delves have installed their beautiful, thought provoking projected work, Sea Change.
A still from Catriona Taylor’s film of the projection, 2013
The continuation of the Scottish fishing industry has been a theme that Catriona first explored as a painting student at Edinburgh College of Art in 2002. Obviously the situation has moved on since then and being selected to be part of the Casting the Net project was a great opportunity to revisit Eyemouth and gauge the current situation.
Stills from Catriona Taylor’s film of the projection, 2013
Catriona and writer Stuart Delves have taken a research based approach to the work; they interviewed two fishermen in Eyemouth who were generous enough to share lots of facts and their feelings about fishing – historically and currently. They have also read government documents and researched the environmental impact of over fishing. It has been a fascinating process.
They decided to create an installation, which has a large water tank at its core, reminiscent of the large fish tanks in the Fisheries Mutual Agency at Eyemouth. The tank is empty to reflect the demise of the fishing industry in Scotland, an industry that has been relentlessly cut until there are only a handful of fishing boats in Eyemouth harbour. It also represents the over fishing that has undeniably caused the stocks of many fish species in the North Sea to diminish.
The words written in a haiku form (a three line verse) are projected on the empty water as an attempt to convey an understanding of the multi faceted situation in a non partisan way. The poignancy of words are counter pointed by the healing, all pervasive sound of the sea.
We have been asked by a couple of people who have viewed Catriona Taylor and Stuart Delves projection piece if we could post the complete poem in Haiku on the demise of Eyemouth’s fishing industry from start to finish, so please find a copy below to read and reflect on:
SEA CHANGE
Haiku on the demise of Eyemouth’s fishing industry
Once upon a time
Fifty boats in Eyemouth harbour
Now it’s single figures
There was industry ashore
Packing, gutting, barrel making
Now it’s all but gone
Then skipper/owners
Were the order of the day
Sons followed suit
Fleets followed herring
By March ten thousand men and women
Had decamped to Shetland
Those were the good days
When you could walk across the Forth
Head to toe with sprat
By the early 60s
Buyers had imposed quotas:
It started with sprat
For sprat and white fish
There was eight pence a stone
Government subsidy
The buyers were kings
Setting skipper against skipper
Kin against kin
The sea was a field
For those who wade in their dreams
To find its secrets
1974, Ted Heath
‘Sells’ the fishing industry:
Welcome CFP
The European Union’s
Common Fishing Policy.
Not good for Scotland
Which has 8.6%
Of the UK’s population
But lands 62%
Of total fish catch
By value; the industry employs
1% of the population
Politicians say
“Cinderella Industry”
When talking of us
Brussels divvies up:
Fish for the French and Spanish
Banking for UK
The policy has failed
To conserve white fish stocks:
Cod and haddock
Restrictions, hard, yes
But greed’s the deeper wrecker:
‘Fill yer boots’ the cry.
The skill of ring and
Drift net swept aside by trawlers
Churning up sea beds
Landing by the ton
Catch and by-catch indiscriminate:
Discard dead and maimed
Corrugatinging the beds
Where fish spawn and sand eels breed
Sprouting thick as grass
Sand eels are fish food
But trawled by the Danes at Dogger
Mulched for bacon pigs
Boats have been seen queuing
At Dogger Bank, to take their
Turn to turn the blade in
Silver ghosted gills
Glimmer in the reveries
Of housebound skippers
There’s expense as well
£6K a tank of red diesel
£180K a new boat
Sons gone to the rigs
Oil money, not haul money:
Boys away, nae visitors
Now there’s a new quota
Nineteen days a month at sea, max:
That doesn’t make ends meet
E-log satellite!
Like trying to drive a car
While watching TV
Red tape, policy
Quotas, skewed fishing rights
The whole caboodle
But then there’s shellfish
More lobster now than for ages
Crabs, prawns, langoustines
Weep not for white fish
Prawn nets burrow into mud
Crustacean silver
Keeping prawns live for
Mercamadrid, Boqueria
More money, less catch
It’s not as it was
Though, ice plant’s gone, market too
Masts few, far between
Sustainability
Livelihoods
Community
The industry slashed
By 70% since 2003
Can’t take any more cuts
December’s quotas
A glimmer of hope at last
For Scotland, Eyemouth
Prawns raised by 18 %
West Coast herring by 20%
Haddock from 47% to 30%
On blustery days
Washing like sails at the backs
Bringing it all home
Sea Change, 2013: Concept & visuals by Catriona Taylor, words by Stuart Delves
