GO mbeannaí Dia daoibh sea-faring folk and land lubbers and welcome to the Bluffer's Guide to Irish.
Last Friday at 3pm in the ionad pobail - the community centre on Árainn Mhór -Aranmore Island off the Donegal coast, there was the premiere of a film that everyone on the island was interested in.
I mBéal na Stoirme - in the eye of the storm tells the story of John O'Brien, iascaire - a fisherman from Inis Bó Finne didn't know he would be embarking on a long crusade when he undertook a European campaign to regain their ancestors' rights to fish the seas around them.
How could he and the grúpa oileánach - the insular group made up of other small fishermen - have measured the magnitude of the task ahead?
Filmed over eight years, Béal na Stoirme (or A Turning Tide in the Life of Man as the film is known in English) tells how John put himself, as David versus Goliath, in the heart of the new reform of the Comhbheartas Iascaireachta - the Common Fisheries Policy in Brussels to try to understand and change the system that took everything from him.
This film is about one man, about a
community, a country and about all Europe. Fishing is essential to the slí bheatha - livelihood of the inhabitants of the small off-shore islands of Árainn Mhór, Inis Bó Finne and Tory since time immemorial maidir le bia - in food terms, but in social and cultural terms and like many of Europe's coastal regions, it constitutes the main and in some cases the sole means of obtaining a livelihood for an iliomad teaghlach -numerous families who depend on it. Iascaireacht chósta ar mhionscála - small scale coastal fishing has contributed greatly to the unique seafaring cultural dynamic of western Europe but this a way of life that is now in peril as ever increasing srianta - restrictions and rialacha - regulations are imposed on coastal fishing practices.
Save the fish stocks - The magnitude of the problem of ró-iascaireacht overfishing is often overlooked, given the competing claims of deforestation, desertification, energy resource exploitation and other biodiversity depletion dilemmas.
In the same time, the rapid growth in demand for fish and fish products is leading to fish prices increasing faster than prices of meat much to the detriment of small-
scale fishing and fishing communities all over the world.
However, as Nobel Prize-winner in Economics, Elinor Ostrom has said: "Under certain conditions, when communities are given the right to self-organise they can democratically govern themselves to preserve the environment. Common resources as forests, fisheries, grazing lands, can be managed successfully by the people who use them, rather than by governments or private companies."
I mBéal na Stoirme will be shown on TG4 later in the year.