The New Year has seen in the start of International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture as declared by the UN General Assembly (IYAFA 2022).
Small in scale, big in value is the theme of this celebration. The short promotional video featured below suggests some of the reasons why.
It was ten years ago today that an independent publishing services provider, The Manuscript Publisher opened its doors to the reading public with the publication of their first book … and what a sensation it has turned out to be.
A Woeful Tale by Derrick Cranpole (ISBN: 9780957115712) describes the trials, tribulations but also the triumphs of Irish fishermen and seafarers who bring home the national catch and keep food on our tables. Its author (and illustrator), Derrick Cranpole, is a veritable champion of seafarers and coastal communities, in addition to being the bane of the bureaucracy and officialdom that presides over the EU's Common Fisheries Policy.
Read it for yourself to find out why. It is available to buy online, in print and e-book editions.
Also published on this day but two years later (in 2014) was the first instalment in the very successful Diaries of the Cornish Fisherman that is Trevor Simpson.
Volume I in the series – Diary of a Cornish Fisherman – charts the years between 1962-1967, when he was operating out of Newquay in Cornwall, learning the ropes of the fishing trade while raising a young family. The account ends with a pulsating and perilous journey across the Irish Sea, making landfall at Waterford's Dunmore East at 7pm on 22 August 1967.
Little did he know at the time that this would be his home for the next 50 years. That story is taken up in Volume II – A Cornish Fisherman's Irish Diary – also available to buy online in print and e-book editions.
