Against the Tide
This story follows one of the last licensed commercial shark fishermen in the United States. Both policy and public sentiment are against David Stiller. There are places around the world where shark populations are critically struggling, but according to studies and anecdotal evidence from fishermen throughout the Gulf, populations across almost all species are more than thriving due to a focus on reversing extensive overfishing in the ‘70s and ‘80s that decimated numbers. Federal regulations have made it more and more difficult for commercial shark fishermen, who send hand-sourced meat to the food industry, to make a living.
The Gulf is a place of both comfort and unease. It’s a force that can be disturbed, can take different forms, yet never wanes in the confidence of its existence. When meeting the mouth of the Bay, their give and take changes them both. Feeds into and from one another. The brackish pass, confluence. It is now, was and will be past and present. Its shoreline undergoes constant reconstruction, molded by the water’s flow. A flow that’s etched into canyons and deltas and riverbeds the world over. The surface evolves. Shifts. Yet below, a heartbeat thrums. Undying. Unyielding. Its depths, murky and unknown to a simple human eye, cause fear and longing.
David feels that pull to the water. Time and time again putting himself, and his crew, at its mercy. Of all the elements, and the life below. The life he knows is reliant on it all. As it was for his father and his father’s father, so on since the 1890s. Like a bird’s migratory path, their experiences distilled over lifetimes have ingrained the skills in his DNA. The manual labor. The procedure. The laws and regulations. How to contend with the fervor that imagines a separation between animal and dinner. His knowledge is innate and learned.
The Raw Society aims to tell stories from a different perspective, true to the subject’s point of view. This is a story about people, their relationship to nature and the politics and emotions that define you either as outlier or outlaw.
About the budget