Mud-dragger

Invented in 9.836, mud-draggers are a type of bucket dredger that was instrumental in building the Sikivat irrigation canals, which drained the marshes, turning them into arable land, and connected the outlying coastal villages to the mainland. The dredged material was later used to construct the coastal flood defences.   Like all bucket dredgers, mud-draggers cannot work in areas with waves and swell, and so are limited to inland dredging. Although the design is now considered largely obsolete, having been replaced by backhoe dredgers, which are quieter and more efficient, and do not obstruct canal traffic. Despite this, some mud-draggers are still used in less well-travelled or more sparesely-populated areas, where they keep the drainage canals free of sediment.  

Effects on coastal culture

Prior to the construction of the irrigation canals, the marshlanders lived in isolated villages on and near the coast and subsisted on wildfowl, eels, fish, and shellfish. The draining of the marshes for arable land permanently changed their way of life, destroying the marshlands that provided feeding and breeding sites for wildfowl and restricting the eels and fish to the canals so that eel-trapping, fowling, and fishing were no longer able to feed the small inland communities.   The coastal communities were no less affected, as the process of digging the canals caused significant runoff, and the subsequent construction of berms and dykes that comprised the first efforts at flood control destroyed the cultivated mussel banks and seagrass meadows that the coastal marshlanders relied on.   Faced with the extinction of their way of life, the marshlanders fought back, attempting to disrupt or delay work or destroy equipment, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. Many villages dwindled into nothing as their inhabitants were driven inland, or their culture was fatally disrupted by the arrival of permanent and itinerant workers who arrived to make use of the newly-available fertile soil.