Alex Gilford
Rab Hamilton is a prawn fisherman and mountaineer living in Cuil Bay, Scotland. On my last visit to him in 2018, he took my fiancé, brother, and me out in his boat onto Loch Linnhe and Loch Leven, and showed us how to pull up the creels, gather the prawns, bait the creels, and shoot them back out into the water. His mouth is caught open, whether it is to tell you the name of each hill that rises up from the shoreline and beyond, to belt out a sea shanty to a greenhorn mariner who is new to “the outdoor life”, or to regale you with tales of past mountaineering expeditions. His nose is rosy with the brisk November wind coming down from the mountains and off of the water. His etched crow’s feet are evidence of an adventurous life. His gaze is cast off into the distance, perhaps tinged with dread for the collapsing fisheries aggravated by large commercial fishing operations— a threat to his way of life, as “the last of the hunters”. A sole proprietor who takes only what is ready to be gotten. It is a look that knows “the seas have had enough.” Prawns crawl out from the creel and into the tangled rope below. Sea life swirls around him. Anticipatory seagulls wheel above his head, hoping to make a meal out of the unsought creatures as they are thrown overboard, intent on resuming their life in the watery depths.
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