Thomas Flett lives and works in the seaside town of Longferry in 1962 England. He’s a shanker, a man who spends his days dragging nets behind his horse. He hunts for shrimp through the muck of the nearby shores at low tide. Flett is young, in his early 20s, yet moves like an old man stinking of fish, and his hands are always raw and frozen.
Other shankers have turned to industrial solutions, trawling by motorized boats. They’ve abandoned the cold, wet, and dangerous system that Flett’s‘s grandfather worked for years before he died. By sailing further from shore, trawlers with bigger nets can catch five times as much as Flett could by hand.
