For hundreds of years, fishing communities along the Dorset coast lived from the shoals of mackerel that migrate between May and October.

Fishing the traditional way, with seine nets in shallow waters, tightly knit crews used wooden lerret boats to pull bumper catches ashore. Bound by this communal, seasonal wait and scramble for fish, their friendships and rivalries, identity and language, were shaped by the sea.

The stories, photographs and recordings collected here give us a vivid picture of a way of life that has largely disappeared. We hear of family gatherings on the beach, and of men and women who lived for the fishing and whose intimate local knowledge, gleaned over a lifetime and passed down over the generations, were essential to their livelihoods. These voices echo through time to tell us about people who were completely connected to place and who lived by 'the ways of beach'.