GOING TO THE SAND

Poster for the exhibition: A Tessa Bunney photograph

This week the exhibition ‘Going to the Sand’ based on inshore fishing around Morecambe Bay has opened at the Mission Church. We are delighted that Tessa agreed write a short article for the magazine about the exhibition.

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During the past four years I have spent many days 6 miles out on the sands and wading into estuaries which feed into Morecambe Bay with fishermen in all seasons and all weathers. I learnt about craams and riddles, tide tables and bye-laws, shrimping, musselling and cockling, fishing with all kinds of nets. These skills have been passed down through generations of fishermen, all with the backdrop of the beautiful but often harsh landscape of the Bay. During this relatively short space of time regulations have changed resulting in many of my photographs documenting the end of several eras. Going to the Sand was first shown at Lancaster Maritime Museum in 2022.

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Other than a quick visit to Walney Island lighthouse in August 1991, I had not visited the north-west coast or Morecambe Bay until I landed there in 2018 sort of by chance. Although I had once read about Morecambe Bay potted shrimps and the Chinese cockle picker tragedy, it was otherwise an unknown landscape to me. In August 2018, I joined a foraging trip run by Taste the Wild which included a tractor ride out on to the Sand with two of Flookburgh’s handful of remaining shrimpers. Several miles out on the Bay I was already transfixed, not only by the landscape but also fascinated by the fishermen’s stories and the range of fishing techniques still happening around the Bay.

Morecambe Bay, October 2018: Tessa Bunney

On route to Flookburgh I stopped by the fish shop in Morecambe which had just received a salmon delivery from Sunderland Point….

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I first met Margaret and Trevor Owen later that month and was fascinated to discover that Sunderland Point is unique in Britain as being the only community to be on the mainland and yet dependent upon tidal access via a 1.25-mile-long single-track road crossing a tidal marsh.

Waiting to cross the causeway to Sunderland Point, August 2018: Tessa Bunney

That day in August 2018, Trevor was heading out on his boat whammelling and Margaret was going haaf netting, both of them hoping to catch salmon in their various ways. I joined Margaret on the banks of the river Lune that day, unfortunately it wasn’t a lucky one for her although Trevor returned with sackful of salmon, they told me later, that the previous day it had been the other way around. I had no idea at the time that it was the very last days of salmon fishing on the Lune (and everywhere in the UK) although since 2019 the fishermen are still allowed to continue to keep the less lucrative sea trout whilst haaf netting. Whammelling has now finished.

Margaret Owen, August 2018: Tessa Bunney

In the following years, 2019, 2020 and 2022, I have joined various fishermen on different locations along the Lune but still have yet to witness a fish actually being caught! Thank you to Will, Terry and Michael for having me along to watch – maybe this year we will all be luckier!

Will Armer and Michael Price haaf netting for sea trout at Glasson, June 2020: Tessa Bunney

During the winter months Margaret and Trevor Owen set nets to catch sprats and whitebait and supplied them to Blackpool Zoo for feeding the animals including sea lions, penguins, and flamingos.

Trevor and Margaret Owen and whitebait, March 2019: Tessa Bunney

“The fish are caught in a fixed engine net set down at the shore, they have to be emptied four hours after high water, day and night. At night time, the sprats swim on top of the water and in the day time they go to the bottom of the sea and the whitebait swim on the top, so you get whitebait in the day in the same net as you get sprats at night. Quantities depend, sometimes it can be hardly anything, sometimes it can be two or three basketfuls, it all depends on what the sea decides to give you.”

Margaret Owen, Sunderland Point

In addition to taking photographs of all kinds of fishing currently happening around the Bay I have really enjoyed chatting to the various fishermen and their families, hearing their stories, and looking at old photographs of times past.

“I remember Tom going up to his nets which were just a little bit further up the river, with the boat and bringing baskets of whitebait home, absolutely wonderful, all these little silver fish gleaming, brilliant. And of course, to eat them, next best thing to shrimps. When you think about this river, the river Lune, the type of fish it produces, salmon, sea trout, shrimp, mussels, as it did, cockles on the side of sandbanks, leading down into the river, the whitebait… you’ll catch seabass along with the salmon sometimes. Mullet, plaice, dover sole, all within this estuary, a vast array delicious seafood from the river Lune.

Tom Smith whammelling, c1980: Photos courtesy of Alan Smith, Sunderland Point

There were boats coming from Glasson Dock, from Bazil Point, Overton, and Sunderland Point. 15 or 16 boats in the hey day maybe more, all catching fish, all sustaining a living on the river Lune. An industry that sustained many, many fishermen annually 24/7 has just collapsed, salmon have gone and the shrimps have mysteriously gone and also the mussels have gone as well. There are now no commercial fishermen on Sunderland Point.”

 Alan Smith, Sunderland Point

These pictures are from the series ‘Going to the Sand – Inshore fishing around Morecambe Bay’ and were taken between 2018 and 2022. I am delighted to be exhibiting my work at Sunderland Point Mission Heritage Centre this summer and a book published by Another Place Press is on its way.

https://anotherplacepress.bigcartel.com/product/going-to-the-sand-tessa-bunney

We asked Tessa if she would tell us a bit more about her photography – which she kindly has.

For over 30 years, I have photographed rural life, working closely with individuals and communities to investigate how the landscape is shaped by humans. From hill farmers near my home in North Yorkshire to Icelandic puffin hunters, from Romanian nomadic shepherds to Lincolnshire flower farmers I believe my projects reveal the fascinating intricacies of the dependencies between people, work, and the land. 

And she sent us this splendid photo of herself.

Tessa Bunney: Photo © John Angerson

Please note: We now move onto a two week cycle for publishing articles, it is almost summer and we must spend more time in the garden. Next article Sunday June 4th.