The Long Threshold

A lagoon is neither a lake nor the sea. Tam Giang–Cau Hai, on the coast of Thua Thien Hue province in central Vietnam, is a chain of shallow basins. A ribbon of sand separates them from the ocean, and only a very small number of narrow mouths connect them to it. Almost everything about the system follows from those openings.

The book reads the lagoon through its water, in seven states that run from the most still to the most violent, and then the ground: Still, Held, Drifting, Flooded, Hidden, Breaking, Ashore. Bamboo fish traps set across open water. Ponds drawn where the lagoon, or rice, once was. The autumn floods that erase the edges of the plain. Rain passing slowly beneath the dunes. The barrier beach. Households that fish, farm ponds and trade in the course of one year.

A closing essay, Drawing Lines on Water, follows the decade after an FAO project on the lagoon. An index of photographs and a map of the system complete the book.

Texts by Massimo Sarti, marine geologist, who led the FAO project on Tam Giang–Cau Hai from 2005 to 2012. Photographs by Andrea Pistolesi, documentary photographer and filmmaker, author of more than one hundred photographic books.

An Asian Waters book. PadPlaces.

Fixed-layout edition: each screen shows one printed spread. Best read on iPad in landscape.