TITLE: A Dying Tradition: The Story of the Fisher Folk in Dehiwela, West Coast, Sri Lanka

The street where I grew up in Dehiwela, leads down to this beach. For generations, the fisherfolk have lived here in makeshift huts with little sanitation or protection from the vagaries of the weather. The beaches along this coast have always been a hive of activity in the early hours of the morning as the boats come in with the day's catch.

So—I was startled to read earlier this year that this way of life might be a dying tradition.

I took these images in 2014, 6 months after my mum passed. I had travelled back to my childhood home from Australia (where I now live) to finalise my mum’s estate. Since my dad had passed some years previously, I felt that a chapter of my life was closing. The need to document my childhood memories was strong.

As I walked this beach my mind travelled back to those early years.

We would wake in the early hours of the morning to cries of ‘malu malu’ (fish, fish) by vendors selling the days catch! I read in the article that these fisher folk have been in a dire predicament for decades. The coastal belt is undergoing erosion damaging their houses and reducing the area available for anchoring boats and for laying out the fish for auction each morning. The fisherfolk are at the mercy of rich merchants who own the fishing vessels and purchase their catch. The discharge of rubbish and untreated polluted waters have also impacted fish breeding. Many fisherman are leaving their trade to work in construction sites for better wages. Their problems were exacerbated after the tsunami which devastated this coast. Photography plays an important part in documenting history although I didn’t realise at the time that I might have been documenting a dying trade.

AUTHOR: Nilmini De Silva (Australia)

Nilmini De Silva is a documentary photographer based in Australia, who passionately pursues her dreams and inspires others to do likewise. She likes to combine her creative passions with her technical experience as a civil engineer & project manager to create narratives that will help usher in a more regenerative way of living on the Earth. She has studied photography at the Australian Centre for Photography in Paddington. She has exhibited in a number of solo exhibitions in Sydney including Connections; Fate or Destiny; and Faces, Places, Races: Migrant Stories from the Hornsby Shire (Associated Exhibition at HeadOn).

She is the author of Fate or Destiny: Living Life with Passion, a collection of photos and stories that aim to inspire people to make conscious choices in life rather than to merely follow the well-trodden trail. She has also collaborated on projects that have raised awareness about social issues ranging from food waste, protection of old growth rainforest and breast cancer. Most recently she was an Artist in Residence on FLOAT, in Lake Tyers, Victoria. Her project attempts to demonstrate the role of art in creating a new more resilient economy in a time of change.

Nil loves discovering places that are off the beaten track and feel drawn to people who have the courage to think outside the square. She is inspired by the sense of freedom and adventure in the people she meets while travelling. She has always had a ‘spiritual’ connection with nature and prefers to travel ‘close to the ground’ in order to fully connect.