Episode 3 Sruthanna

# Wind blows down from the northern sky

# Waves rise up to meet the eye

# Fisherman bring in your line this time... #

The sand is being pumped into the tank in a slurry -

water and sand mixed.

The sand is settling in the tank and the water goes overboard.

It's virtually impossible to sink these boats.

They were purpose-built for the job,

they're all buoyancy tanks

and it's practically physically impossible on a flat, calm day

to fill that tank with the boat down.

How much would you lift in one session like this in one load?

Erm, about 200 tonnes would be a good load.

At the moment, there's 17 boats working on the lough

and at one time, these were the biggest boats in the lough.

They're now amongst the smaller ones.

There are boats on the lough that are carrying 300-350 tonnes

that have been brought in by row.

These boats come in via the lower Bann.

These were the maximum size that the loughs on the lower Bann can take,

120 foot by 20.

The sand that's on the bottom of Lough Neagh,

how did it get there? Is it glacial?

Yeah, it was about 15,000, 12,000 years ago,

at the end of the last ice age, as the glaciers were melting.

I read recently that there's over a million tonnes of sand

extracted from Lough Neagh every year.

It's clearly a finite resource. How long will it last for?

A million and half tonnes a year sounds a lot,

but in comparison to the area of sand that's here,

it's going to last a long time.

It's been in full production since the end of World War II,

things really started getting revved up.

There's a lot of industries that have sprang up round

the shores of the lough,

you know, concrete and one thing and another,

and all those brought jobs to the area from the sand.

It'll not last for ever, but it's got a long, long way to go.

I hear that most of the sand that was used to build

Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, and also for the pitch there,

actually came from Lough Neagh here.

The last time the pitch was refurbished,

I think it was about 6,000 or 7,000 tonnes

of Lough Neagh sand went to Croke Park

and that's the reason why Sam Maguire has come to

the shores of Lough Neagh so often in the last few years.

They're playing on their home ground.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd