These photos are taken from the archive at the Green Library at Stanford University:
https://exhibits.stanford.edu/bacon/browse
Walking up the road in the warm night, with the town sleeping around them, two men turn onto a dirt track between ramshackle houses towards the beach. Where the coconut palms meet the rocks and gravel, they pass young men who have wrapped themselves in thin colored cloth. They’re sleeping on the ground, their heads invisible.
Fishing boats are drawn up on the beach. The two men, a young teenager and an older man, walk over to the best-looking boat, painted red with indistinct words on the side. It’s a thin, shallow hull, with a small covered section in the middle over a diminutive motor. Two white outriggers are tied to the end of curving bamboo arms, one on each side. A big net is wrapped up under a cover in the middle of the boat.
The sleeping men wake up. Together they begin pushing the boat on bamboo rollers down the beach. Lifting the outrigger arms, they slide the hull into the water, and the boat floats in the small waves. It’s almost totally dark, a crescent moon moving in and out of clouds crossing the sky.
The older man hoists a bag full of beer, and gingerly walks from the needle-nose prow down into the hold between the engine and the net, as the boat rocks gently beneath him. He is Ayon, the captain. Beboy, his helper, jumps on. Ayon starts the motor, and the boat pulls away from the beach.
Ayon loops a wire connected to the accelerator around his big toe. With one hand he steers the boat with a long pole connected to the rudder, while he guns the small engine with his foot. They set out into total darkness, the boat rising and falling with the waves. Bohol’s strange peaks are looming dark shapes on the horizon, above the tiny lights of the towns of Garcia Hernandez and Jagna.
FISHING IN THE BOHOL SEA
Photoessay by David Bacon
Food First, 6/11/21
https://foodfirst.org/
https://
davidbaconrealitycheck.
blogspot.com/2021/06/fishing-in-bohol-sea.html