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On Egum, with the entire community of 120 sharing a single net seven meters long and one meter tall, they have to band together to feed everyone. Eight fishing boats fan out in an arc across the reef, and young men splash, shout, and throw coral at the fish to scare them into the net set on a shallow patch of reef. It was quite an effective technique, something like a cattle drive, and in an hour or two of fishing they had enough small fish to fill a canoe; quite enough for the entire village. The more people who fish together, the more fish caught per participant, reinforcing communal living on the tiny, remote atoll.

Filename
STNMTZ_19991101_53.tif
Copyright
© 1999 George Steinmetz
Image Size
7236x4832 / 100.1MB
www.georgesteinmetz.com
Contained in galleries
Solomon Sea
On Egum, with the entire community of 120 sharing a single net seven meters long and one meter tall, they have to band together to feed everyone. Eight fishing boats fan out in an arc across the reef, and young men splash, shout, and throw coral at the fish to scare them into the net set on a shallow patch of reef. It was quite an effective technique, something like a cattle drive, and in an hour or two of fishing they had enough small fish to fill a canoe; quite enough for the entire village. The more people who fish together, the more fish caught per participant, reinforcing communal living on the tiny, remote atoll.

All images ©George Steinmetz. Please contact us for usage.