Projects > Six Miles Intu't Bay

Chris Abram says:

"I love making high quality and well researched films about the beauty and heritage of Britain. As part of the "Our Heritage" series of dvd's that I am producing I am eighteen months into one called "Morecambe Bay-Our Heritage". Morecambe Bay is a beautiful area of Britain, the second largest tidal bay in the UK, fringed on one side by the magnificent peaks of the Lake District and on the other by the Arnside/Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the traditional seaside resort of Morecambe."

"Morecambe Bay is famous for it's seafood, ranging from salmon, sea trout, flat fish and of course its' cockles and shrimps. I wanted to experience what it was really like to be one of the few remaining professional shrimpers in the bay and so I asked Michael Wilson to take me six miles out into the bay on his tractor. Travelling six miles over wave cut ridges, gullies and through rivers on a rusty old tractor which has only one seat, and that is for the driver, was certainly a numbing experience. The biggest problem was preventing the saltwater spray and sand from ruining my camera. After that, somehow standing up to your waist in a gently flowing river estuary without waders or oilskins, filming Michael and his friend trawling on their tractors for shrimp, didn't seem too bad."

"This short 11 minute film has been made purely to show my video club, Morecambe Bay Movie Makers. The film also features an aerial sequence which I shot from a microlight. I also filmed "live" as Bay Rescue Services sped across the sands in their caterpillar wheeled vehicles to an incident. Morecambe Bay may be beautiful but it is also a highly dangerous place, as the infamous Chinese Cockling Disaster proved, with its tide "which comes in at the speed of a galloping horse," and its treacherous quicksands."

"I wanted to record a way of life which will disappear quite soon as there are few young people interested in the work and also that shrimp catches are becoming much smaller. Morecambe Bay-Our Heritage will also feature footage of the last horse & cart shrimper, shrimping by boat and also unique footage that I have taken of two of the last remaining Haf Net fishermen in the estuary of the River Lune. This is where they stand up to their chests in the estuary with wide nets on a long pole and catch the salmon as the tide comes in. Sequences from Six Miles Intu't Bay will be used in the full length Morecambe Bay-Our Heritage video."

Six Miles Intu't Bay was filmed in high definition using a pair of Sony Z1 cameras and Sennheiser shotgun mics with double wind gags.