TV review: Cork fisherman meets 'the salt of the earth' in Faraway Fields
Kinsale Skipper Johnny Walsh on board one of the Gambian fishing boats in Faraway Fields – The Hardest Harvest.
Fishing is a challenge, a big gambling game, Johnny Walsh says at the start of new RTÉ documentary series Faraway Fields.
“Left or right, east or west, is the difference between a cracking year and an average one.”
Owner and operator of three trawlers out of Kinsale Harbour, Walsh’s words are ironic, given what he’s just about to undertake – a journey to see if he can survive in one of the world’s poorest countries: The Republic of the Gambia off the west coast of Africa, where he will fish by hand and live off his catch.
In the village of Tanji, the hub of the Gambia’s fishing fleet, Walsh sees the hard demands of survival that push people to the limits of their endurance. “Mad, just mad,” he says, watching 45kg crates of fish brought ashore on top of people’s heads, and sees the race to bring the catch to market before it spoils in 30 degree heat.
He hears the hard facts: a population solely dependent for survival on one fish stock, sardinella – fish stocks in serious decline for 10 years now due to industrial fishing and warming waters.
“You see how far we have to travel to catch fish – five hours! Years ago we didn’t have to travel. We just got in our boats and cast our nets,” one boat captain tells Walsh.
Walsh’s heartbreak, faced with the vulnerability of a people who have no “plan B”, is obvious as he contemplates the strong possibility of a worst-case scenario: famine. Yet this hour-long first episode has colour, vibrancy, fun. It’s there in the singing, dancing, clapping when a catch is hauled aboard. It’s in the camaraderie between Walsh and the crew he fishes with over his two-week stay.
“They’re singing… they’re hailing my name – ‘Johnny, Johnny, Johnny’ – I’m the visitor, I’m zero in the boat, so they’re taking the mick, having a big skit, but it’s good craic,” he laughs.
Walsh hears about the efforts of those who leave fishing to try and get to a better way of life, about what locals call ‘the back way’: trying to make it to Europe in boats they once fished in. “Two hundred people are missing from here and we don’t know where they are,” he is told.
Should they or their fellow Gambians ever make it to Ireland, trying for a better way to live, he thinks about how they’ll be called refugees. And it is a measure of the connections he has made here that this weighs on him.
“It’s kind of sad, considering that…jeez, they’re the salt of the earth.”
- Faraway Fields on RTÉ Player; episode two and three air on RTÉ One, June 14 and 21, 9.35pm.
