Other claims of falsehoods include creating the Aran family who were unrelated cast members handpicked by Flaherty to play the roles of mother, father, and son. In another sequence, Flaherty shows the mother buffeted by a storm as she carries seaweed along the Inishmore cliffs. What appears to be a traditional activity carried out by Aran women is a fabrication.The seaweed is collected for fertilization and is gathered from the low-lying shores twice per month, and only when the tides are absolutely calm. And Kimball points out that religion, which is rooted in the islanders lives, even among the locally recruited actors, is entirely absent. Flaherty also exposed the islanders to great risk, asking them to perform the most astonishing feats in stormy seas despite the fact none of the islanders could swim. As Flaherty says, “looking back I should have been shot for what I asked these superb people to do for the film...for the enormous risks...and all for the sake of a keg of porter and five pound a piece.”