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Monday 6 February 2012

For one Cornishman, the toughest place to be a fisherman? - Sierra Leone

Last year a delegation from Senegal visited Newlyn in an attempt to help publicise the number of foreign vessels plundering local waters - this time local fisherman Andy Giles gets to visit Sierra Leone and see at first hand the damage done by such vessels. 
Cornish fisherman Andy Giles gives up his state of the art trawler to travel to the coast of Sierra Leone, where the fishing is done from a dugout canoe. Living in a small community of mud huts, Andy discovers a very different way of life where a bad day's fishing means a hungry family. Even this precarious lifestyle is now under threat from foreign trawlers that fish illegally in the villagers' waters, taking their fish, destroying their nets and sometimes even sinking their canoes, with tragic consequences. 

Through the international language of the fisherman, Andy develops a lasting friendship with his hosts, in a film which highlights the plight of subsistence fishermen around the world.