As the late-summer sun sets in the doorway of a hundred-year-old barn on the shores of Lake Mekrijärvi, Eastern Finland, Sutej Hugu sings about catching flying fish in the waters of his home island – Pongso no Tao – which lies in the Philippine Sea some 8,000km to the south east.
Listening to Hugu in a rapt semi-circle are fishing people from across the world: voyagers of star and sea from Taumako in the Solomon Islands; Inuit hunter-fishers from the Greenland ice shelf; glacial dip-netters from Alaska; Saamí from the Arctic Circle, and Finnish fishers from waters salty and fresh, east and west.
This unlikely and truly global community has gathered for the Festival of Northern Fishing Traditions – a unique fisher-to-fisher exchange which offers a space for Indigenous and small-scale fisherpeople to meet in-person, share knowledge and re-charge the stores of care and confidence needed to face up to challenges from climate change to the devastating impacts of industrial fishing.
See full re-cap of the Festival here. See BBC coverage of fishing-led restoration by Snowchange here.
