The Night Fishermen of Parede

A honeycomb foam is sucked back across the rocky shelf, dragging seaweed and tugging at shells. The sliver of the late September moon lights the sandy beach as it disappears into the reef. Lights gather and huddle around an exposed rock pool. Headlamps on the night fishermen of Parede. Glances flicker and reveal glimpses of faces, buckets and boots. The tide is going out and the men rush to work.

Packing only handtools and experience, they work in teams to quickly plunder the pool of its goods. Their work is ageless. The same methods, tools and pools were used last year and in the hundreds of years before that. These are analogue men in a digital age.

Noise and lights sweep around the entirety of the cove. Motorbike engines squeal as cars growl around the bend. The traffic lights blur into the neon night. A casino sign flickers and dominates the streetscape, leaving the fishermen near invisible. 

Far out past the men and the low tide floats a cruise ship. Decked head to hull in lights it floats like a Christmas tree of the high seas. In the sky above the beacon of a returning airplane flashes. Surrounded on all sides by technology the fishermen work as they pull shells from the seafloor.

As the slice of moon rises higher in the sky, it pulls the tide further from the shore. Picking up their buckets, the fishermen's lights and feet dance across the rocks to see what the sea has left behind.