Shrimp Fishing on Horseback for 700 Years

The best time to go fishing is early in the morning It begins life begins And then you're there alone alone on the water A creature weighing around 1 000 kilograms It's listening to you Oostduinkerke is the last place on Earth where fishing with horses still takes place in the sea I'm Stefan Hanke and I'm the fourth horse fisherman in Oostduinkerke A Belgian draft horse isn't naturally suited to going into the sea Learning to go fishing at sea takes about a year and that's enough time for the horse to manage it And then the horse holds on believing things will get better With complete trust in you The horse must trust you And then you must guide him carefully through the sea We fish for about three hours It's not always necessary we don't need to go that deep We need to locate where the withers are Usually that's about at the horse's chest height Those are roughly what's in our net—take a look The tiny particles filtered through the sieves Let the small ones return to the sea so they can grow Nothing is wasted The tradition dates back to the 13th and 14th centuries And if we want it to continue existing it must always remain rooted in the same tradition from the 90s We had two or three horse traders There were differences that had stopped They were too old because they no longer had a horse And right now there are 19 horsefishers And at the moment there are three young people in training As well as my son below I was about five years old I think The first time I went to the sea with my dad And I was bitten right away I thought that was so much fun That's why I always end up going along It's calming to sit on that horse And you're in tune with nature Hearing has always been part of coastal life That’ s just how it is now If you clap from East Dunkirk They could be people from the other side of the world Speaking of East Duinkerke they know the horse fishermen That hearing was part of our culture I am very proud of that