Small-Scale Fisheries, Local Seafood and the Future of Fishing Heritage in South Wales
The fishing heritage of South Wales will serve as the focal point for a project that integrates critical heritage research with a politically and ecologically conscious agenda for small-scale production and localised consumption.
Generously funded by CHART (Centre for Heritage Research and Training) and DePOT (Deindustrialization and the Politics of Time), this doctoral project aims to provide an innovative and timely analysis on fishing heritage and food culture in South Wales.
The future of the Welsh fishing industry is increasingly precarious. Despites its rich history and the unique attributes of the fleet, heritage is seldom discussed in relation to Wales’s inshore fishery. With the greatest proportion of small-scale fishing vessels in the UK, the industry is more artisanal than its neighbours and sustainable techniques have been transmitted down generations.
These values are underappreciated by central and local government, academics, and the public. Over 80% of the catch is exported to the continent and seafood consumed locally is supplied by foreign markets. At the same time, heritage – enacted in the tourism and leisure sectors – often works against the fishing industry, prompting gentrification, the proliferation of second homes, and the outmigration and alienation of communities.
Responding to these tensions, my research examines the reconfiguration of fishing communities in South Wales, questions the great divide between the consumption and supply of seafood, and investigates the destructive value systems that engender these contradictions in the uses of fishing heritage.
This project deploys mixed methods including archival materials, oral history interviews and ethnography. Active engagement with the contemporary landscape and communities are a priority and those interviewed include fishermen, fishmongers, fish merchants, government officials and fishing tourism providers. My fieldwork has also entailed photography and sound recording. While this project looks at South Wales as a whole, four locations serve as focal locations for fieldwork: Swansea, Milford Haven, Gower and Tenby. Each of these areas retain links with the fishing industry, but are distinct in their morphology, economic base and population demographic.
With ecological collapse approaching, the need to reconsider our habits of extraction and consumption is imminent. Heritage will be considered in alternative, ecologically oriented and less anthropocentric terms and used to address barriers to, and strategies for, small-scale production and localised consumption. While heritage cannot be extricated from capitalism, I am interested to see whether this unique engagement can disrupt harmful cycles of consumption and bring attention to the needs of fishing communities.
[IPhoto coffeecakekids from Pixabay]
