The Last Percebe

Few harvesters are left who dare to face the threatening ocean swell in Galicia. Every day they risk their lives to feed their families on the rare barnacle, in a place laid waste by drugs and by the disappearance of this precious resource.

They lower themselves tens of metres down razor-sharp rocks in search of a rare shellfish, the percebe, while the violent waves spare no one, dragging them under. In the Spanish autonomous community of Galicia, on the Costa da Morte, there are still women doing the brutal work of barnacle harvesting as though it were the most ordinary job in the world.

Dangerous or not, emancipation came far faster in these regions precisely because of this work. Now they are the last women on the rocks, because the precious shellfish is slowly but surely disappearing, on a coast submerged by drugs and environmental trouble.