Practice English Speaking&Listening with: ANTES DO INVERNO - Documentário sobre a Pesca Artesanal da Tainha em Bombinhas/SC

Good morning, Vav

Good morning

To the canoe!

BEFORE WINTER

My father used to fish

And my grandfather

And all of those who came before them

Whom I have not met.

It is a life of patience

And patience comes with time

No one knows how this all started

And how it's been kept alive during all these years

All we can do is wait

Until the watchman signals

To put the canoes in the water to encircle the fish

It can happen any time

Maybe even now!

Go, go!

Come on!

Come on, let's go!

Look, ever since I can remember

At my age

Since I started wandering around

When I was a young boy, I used to come here

People were already fishing tainha.

Because this goes back to my great-grandparents

Before my great-grandparents

It's always been with tainha nets.

Their fishing here was...

The fishing of tainha.

The first time I worked fishing tainha

I was already 14 years old.

But always together with my dad

Learning from him.

We used to catch lots of fish

And it didn't pay much.

At that time nobody had money

to make a boat like that.

It was easy to buy a canoe.

They bartered for canoes.

But nobody made boats.

I was a little boy here

My father used to catch tainha with a cast net, close to the rocks

My grandma used to scold him saying she didn't Have space to store the fish! It was all cured.

I had to use both hands to carry One tainha, because I was little.

When they arrived it was a big party.

Both for us and for them!

Because we felt that joy to see it.

Oh my god! What's-his-face...

Oh! They caught it! "Shut up, be silent!"

Oh that's beautiful! look what is coming there.

And those little canoes came.

Because at that time, there were those canoes, you know?

What are you doing Joo?

Tallow for the boat.

Is it the grease?

Then you spread them on the logs

And on the keel of the boat

So that it slides.

So that it slides more smoothly, right?

Yes.

Every year I make this.

Then it melts. Now it is watery.

Later it becomes... Do you understand? In paste.

How does that work? Does it have to cool down for two days?

Six hours and it's ready.

In 6 hours you can already cut it into pieces...

Got it?

Yes.

Nobody is born a fisherman.

I joined the group this year.

It is an honor to be fishing.

Every night I go to bed thinking of The day I will get on the canoe

And grab the paddle.

I wake up early

I go to the beach

I meet the group

We take the canoes down. And we wait.

Everything seems calm.

All of a sudden, the watchman points to the sea

And lets the boss know.

You can see from far that piece of cloth waving.

Everyone looks for the fish.

The canoe goes into the water

The cable goes to the shore

The paddlers row very hard

Everything happens very fast.

When we finish bringing the net around

We don't always know what's inside.

A lot of people help to pull the net

Because they know that if there is fish They can take a tainha home.

Is it good there?

So I realized that there are two important Moments in fishing tainha.

The first is that euphoria

When everybody runs.

And the other is pulling the net

When you actually see how many Fish are in there.

Inside the net

There can be many or few.

22.

And each person feels it differently.

But what I really like Is the euphoria

Which is always the same for everyone!

There's no night or day

During these 60 days that we wait for the tainha

When we see them, we get excited!

And when we put them inside The net, even better

And that's how we fish tainha.

Oh, to wake up early almost everyday

Go to school, eat, and come straight to the beach.

Straight.

The most beautiful thing, the one that Marks us the most, is when they encircle them.

They leave to encircle the fish

The group is at the beach... We arrive...

It's a celebration for us.

I came to this beach here

When I was 3 months old.

When I was 10 I gave the signal to encircle my first tainha.

My father came to talk here

With the group

And I stayed up there, he told me to stay there.

"Son, if they come, tell them to encircle."

So I...

But it was a bad catch

It had been about 8 days That we hadn't caught anything.

So I was up there

And I saw the fish coming.

From there to here.

I told them to encircle. My father ran all the way up there.

When he got halfway up the hill it was too late

And I was telling them to encircle.

When he got to the rocks The fish were there

Inside the net.

It was an afternoon like this

Sun. Heat.

So he asked: "son, will we catch many?"

I said: "at least 300, dad"

We caught 313

13 more than I had calculated.

And from there I started...

I had started that thing so they trusted me.

It wasn't necessary anymore To have my father watching

Having only me was enough.

It's a great pleasure.

A great pleasure

To see my friends

Nowadays doing something I used to do.

Because I used to wait for what might come.

And now you

Are waiting for what might come

Because they leave from Rio Grande

But don't tell anyone if they are coming.

I came here once again!

In 1949

We encircled here, 3 nets

Nilo Pinheiro's net, from Outside Beach

And two nets from the late Benjamim.

We caught 20 thousand.

We encircled them at Sepultura Beach In the same year, 1949

The year of the Great Catch, we call it.

30 plus thousand.

At the end of Bombas beach, 40 plus thousand

And it was counted in thousands.

It was the year of the great tainha catch.

We encircled them there on the corner

We caught 54 thousand, that we could count.

And at that time there was no

Refrigerator truck to carry the fish.

There was almost no buyer.

We were lucky that a big boat from Santos

Bought all that fish.

They were there pulling the net

And came here, bought the fish and took it to Santos.

And so it was 54 tonnes.

But they encircled fish to catch about 500 thousand.

The sea was heavy...

It was a rough sea.

And they encircled with 13 nets.

At that time fish was abundant, you know?

We were little, 8, 9, 10 years old

We escaped from our mothers and fathers to go there.

We used to make boats from leaves of banana trees far down the river.

We came paddling. The river ran up to the health center over there.

The width of the river was like from here to that house over there.

You would look underwater and find little shells

There was so much fish

Sole, croaker, "tainha", "tainhota", "parati".

It was a lot of fish.

There was a scallop, as we call it

It is a type of scallop that is found here in this river

You had to know how to remove it.

They danced to soften the bottom of the river to be able to remove it.

Many people got 30 dozens, 40 dozens.

The women took them home

Cooked them and then made a stew with them.

It was so strong that it made people sweat when they ate it.

This is how strong it was.

That was here.

Nowadays when you look... Calamity!

Everything is destroyed.

There are no more fish breeding here.

There isn't anything left there.

That river mouth, we used to go swim there

When the sea came, in the waves...

We would see "parati"...

There were all sorts of fish.

Nowadays you go there, what is left? Nothing. Pollution.

What put an end to tainha fishing here

Wasn't so much the fishing vessels

It wasn't so much the industrial nets

It wasn't so much the handcrafted nets

You know what it was? Pollution.

If people continue to pollute the river

Our fishing will end.

I'm not going to see that, Based on my age.

But the youth will.

It is going to end

day by day.

So the way we fish tainha

Doesn't come from the portuguese.

This comes from the generations of brazilians who lived here

Because this comes from the old times.

Tainha fishing is very very old

Those who are gone, those who died

They haven't even met who started it

Maybe tainha fishing, like they say,

Was started by the portuguese

It's even possible that this type of fishing

was invented by the indigenous people.

What our ancestors had,

they passed on to us

and my intention is to pass it on only when I die.

This is something we are very proud of.

The tainha comes from the Uruguay river

Comes from Rio Grande...

And these big fish that come...

These last fish that come in the winter

They grow in these wider rivers that you see

Having space, they grow.

When you catch a shoaling of fish

in order for it not to fool you too much

There are tricks... When it comes

It signals, it comes jumping, turning around

It moves the water.

Sometimes all you see is yellow at the bottom of the sea.

One must have experience with tainha.

Because 100, 200 fish pass by here...

From the beach one can't see.

If you don't have a watchman there...

To tell the guys to encircle

You don't... From the beach one can't see the tainha.

We stay there, in reality, waiting

for an alert from the watchman.

When they come in a shoaling like this

And you see purple there in the water

You look, you keep looking!

When they jump, Those who know say

"It's tainha, it's a shoaling of tainha"

You can tell them to encircle.

And the moment that we get more excited

is when the fish is encircled.

Jumping... Flopping inside the net.

But I really like fishing tainha.

The most beautiful thing is to see a big shoaling be encircled

And see the tainhas jumping.

Look, I live here.

But if I know that they are encircling there, I run.

I go there.

It's beautiful... And it's a delicious fish, right?

It only comes once a year. It's not much.

There are so many things the eyes don't see.

The wonders of God are for everyone.

But few realize that.

Maybe some still remember

those late afternoons

with many cast netting

in those cold waters of May.

In those days

We still had traditional healers

People did their laundry in the fountain

Children played in the mounds.

But that's how it is.

We are born revealing what

We ourselves forget.

That being alive

is our greatest gift.

Nature still has many mysteries.

Some come.

Others go.

But nothing ends without starting again.

Oh, look at that big yellow there. It is coming here...

I think they are going, Roberto.

There, it jumped again.

Did you see it?

It pointed!

Go, go, go!

Encircle them!

If this still exists

It is only to keep the tradition.

We are fishing to have something to...

Keep the nostalgia away.

We sometimes, I think to myself...

God forgive me if I'm wrong

But sometimes

Years are passing and we don't get a decent amount of fish

This is due to greed.

Everything has changed.

They are working, but it seems that there are some...

that don't make an effort saying others don't make it either.

This is it.

They don't all work as hard.

I feel that it is something that we ask God to send

for everyone to fish and for everyone to eat!

And it is something that is a tradition, that we have always faced this phase.

The best celebration for me is catching the tainha.

It's not because of the...

the flavor

because I like it

It's only because...

I like it just because...

The way it jumps in the net...

It is beautiful.

Our time is coming to an end.

And we all know that.

The nostalgia stays.

I pray to God that our story never ends.

And that our strength and our courage

Inspire the youth

And that they continue this art.

We are still the same.

Inside of us nothing has changed.

And we were made from the lives of those who came before us.

And our story will be told

by our children

and grandchildren.

And from everything we have lived

the only thing we are sure about

is what we are today

and what we can do now.

"Last night I had a dream,

I dreamt of my love.

He was at the window

waiting for the sunset."

The Artisanal Fishing of Tainha has been declared HISTORICAL, ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL HERITAGE

Of the Bombinhas Municipality according to Law Number 1285 of July 4th, 2012.

A documentary about Traditional Fishing of Grey Mullet in Bombinhas (Brasil)

Currently in the Bombinhas Municipality There are approximately 55 canoes.

We thank the traditional fishing community for their participation

and all of those who have collaborated and who believed in this project.

"We are still the same, Inside of us nothing has changed."