Episode 4 The Fisherman's Apprentice with Monty Halls

For hundreds of years, small fishing boats have set sail

to bring home the riches of our coastal waters.

He's got one! He's caught a monkfish! He has!

But fishing has changed.

Deep sea trawlers now catch most of the fish we eat.

Stocks are in decline, and fishermen are getting a bad name.

Hour after hour, day after day, I've lowered fish through that hatch.

Can that level of fishing be sustained,

long term, into the future?

Rising costs and stringent regulations,

have left our fishermen in crisis.

Can they survive the threats to their future?

None of us really know what's around the corner.

Everything's up in the air. It's a worrying time.

Marine biologist, Monty Halls, is going to explore the challenges

facing our fishing industry.

But, from the INSIDE.

As the autumn storms blow in,

Monty heads out on one of the biggest boats in the Cornish fleet.

This is all happening on a massive industrial scale.

For eight days and nights, he'll live and work round the clock,

as a deep sea trawler man, in brutal conditions.

I'm told I'm being a total lightweight.

HE VOMITS

There's nowt worse than being sick out here.

What impact are these boats having on the marine environment?

One stone of dories!

Do deep sea trawler men really deserve their bad reputation?

You know, we're just honest working men,

doing an honest working day, you know.

It's autumn, in Cadgwith Cove, Cornwall.

Since the spring, Monty has been living and working here

as an inshore fisherman.

The eight small boats of the Cadgwith fleet

form the heart of the community.

For 700 years, generations of men have sustainably fished

the local waters.

It's early evening, and the beach is deserted.

All the skippers have headed home, except one.

Danny Phillips has invited Monty out netting.

As well as fishing on his own,

Monty has been crewing with the other Cadgwith skippers,

to learn about their low impact methods.

So you've set nets over the course of the afternoon?

Yeah, we've set some a couple of hours ago.

And Red Mullet, as a fish,

is that sort of a premium product for you?

It is, yeah. It makes good money.

But they're a bit scarce this year.

And the idea is to just catch it more or less

as soon as it's gone in the net, so it's in top quality.

It's red mullet season.

The warm waters of late summer have attracted the fish to the cove.

Only available for a few months each year, red mullet are highly prized.

So, what sort of kilos would you hope to come in with, Danny,

on a good night of red mulleting?

20 or 30 kilo.

And what will you get for all this effort?

Well, they're around about 12 quid a kilo.

Wow, that's not so bad. is it?

To fetch the best price,

each and every fish must be delicately handled.

Danny, I've noticed you're always very careful with your fish.

Presumably, catching such small quantities, it's got to be pristine?

I mean, that's beautiful, look. Not a scale missing.

Absolutely beautiful, in he goes.

That's why I cut the net.

Cos I will take the scales off, otherwise.

Danny, why are we out here this time of day?

Well, I don't know, I've been asking myself that.

HE LAUGHS Many, many times.

The idea is that the red mullet,

most of the time,

they'll swim between the two lights.

So dusk and dawn?

We'll see. The last one, we'll do it in the pitch black,

-and we'll see if there's any difference.

-Yeah.

It's properly the witching hour, now.

The sun's just gone down, and this is really when the fish are moving.

So, we're now going to pull one of the nets.

This is the kind of optimum time, and it's nice, really.

Proper artisanal fishing.

-Jumbo, look at that one.

-Wa-hey.

-Little beauties, aren't they?

-It's a LOVELY-looking fish.

This is why I love it. You just get a couple of tiers, I guess.

I absolutely love it.

This kind of fishing,

working close to the shore, burning minimal fuel, and using gill nets

that specifically target certain species,

has minimal impact on the environment,

and the fish Danny catches are of the highest quality.

They're really sort of full bodied fish, aren't they?

They are, yeah.

But this is a particularly good spot, is it?

That's why we're doing it in the dark.

HE LAUGHS

-Even you can't see where we are.

-Yeah.

-You'll be telling Nigel, otherwise.

-That's right.

-BEEPING

-We're here.

-Shall I just crack on?

-Well, you might get wet.

-Doesn't matter, doesn't matter.

-You sure?

-Oh, yeah!

HE LAUGHS

Poor old Monty.

Cheers, Monty. Did you get wet feet?

Small inshore boats like those in Cadgwith are only responsible

for a fraction of the fish landed in the UK.

Large boats working in deeper offshore waters

catch the vast majority.

Monty wants to see the other end of the fishing industry,

so he's arranged to work aboard one of the biggest boats

in the Cornish fleet.

He sounds out Cadgwith skipper, Tonks,

and fishmonger, Jonathan Fletcher, about his plans.

What went through your head, when I said I was going on a beam trawler?

I wondered how far a search and rescue helicopter could fly.

-Would you do it, Tonks?

-No.

Why not?

It's the type of fishing

that has never interested me.

Jonathan has strong opinions about beam trawlers.

Beamers are from Mars, and crabbers are from Venus.

Beamers are very aggressive, and voracious,

and crabbers are passive.

We use guile and intellect, and trickery, to catch fish.

Beamers use fuel and power,

and hound the fish till they can't run anymore.

But, at the end of the day, we're all fishermen.

Whichever way you chose to do it,

-we're all here to make a living.

-Yeah.

To go aboard a beamer for eight days, you know, fair play to you.

Deep sea trawling is a world away

from the small boat fishing Monty is used to in Cadgwith.

Totally different, full on fishing, you know.

It's two completely different jobs. What we do and what they do.

It WILL be a steep learning curve, that one will.

Pursuing huge catches is a deadly game of risk and reward.

Working far off shore, in all weathers, round the clock,

it's one of the most hazardous and physically demanding jobs

in the world.

Very, very dangerous environment.

A lot of very heavy equipment crashing around.

-I

-wouldn't like to do it, anyway.

Though big industrial boats, over 18 metres in length,

make up only eight % of the British fishing fleet,

they land more than three quarters of our total catch.

If he wants a whole overview of the job, he needs to go and do it.

To see what the other guys do go through...

..to earn a living.

In the cove, the weather has turned.

Unable to launch from the beach, the Cadgwith fleet are grounded

for the time being.

But, for bigger boats working from harbours,

the weather acts as NO deterrent.

I can just hear the wind outside,

and the branches whipping against the windows,

which is normally quite a nice sound.

But it's not a nice sound today,

because I'm heading out for eight days on a beam trawler.

So, thoroughly out into the unknown for me.

This is going to the front line of fishing, really.

HE LAUGHS

I think deep down he knows what he's letting himself in for.

And he probably doesn't really want to be doing it.

You know, a lot of people in his position would probably

bottle out of it.

'There are warnings of gales in Humber, Portland, Plymouth

'and Southeast Iceland.

'The UK outlook for the next 24 hours.

'Strong to gale force Southwesterly winds, but becoming stormy.'

'It's going to be very, very hard work.

'Even the guys in the cove have said you're in for a tough time,

'you know, this is a tough, tough working environment,

'but I think you can just get out there and give it your best shot.'

Just 30 miles from Cadgwith is the industrial fishing port of Newlyn.

AUCTIONEER SAYS PRICES

9,000 tons of fish worth nearly £20 million are landed here every year.

It's among Britain's busiest fishing ports with more than

190 vessels working out of the harbour.

One of the biggest is the Billy Rowney,

a 90-foot, 180-ton beam trawler.

The boat's skipper is Steve Mosley.

-All right, Steve.

-Hi, Monty, mate.

-How are you?

Not bad, yourself?

Good, good. Thank you for having me aboard.

Nah, nah mate, looking forward to it?

Haha. Can't wait, I'm beside myself. Shall I climb aboard?

Come on down mate, watch yourself down the ladder.

Cheers.

-You're the one that's crewing with us?

-I am, I am.

I'm Danny, nice to meet you.

Hiya, mate. Nice to meet you, Danny. How's it going?

-Good, I'll show you where...

-Brilliant, thank you.

At 43, Steve is one of the youngest

and most successful skippers in Newlyn.

For the last few years, the Billy Rowney

has ranked as one of the port's highest-grossing boats.

Time to go back to earn some pennies again.

See how well your Monty performs for a week. Confident enough, so...

But they're all like that when they first come.

Within 24hrs, we'll soon know what our Monty's made of.

He'll appreciate where his fish and chips come from by the time

he's finished this week, I should imagine.

This is basically home for the next eight days and nights.

That's my bunk in there.

I've been told that's my...

This little sort of coffin-shaped cupboard,

and, essentially, in this space here,

five men live for the whole eight days.

It's not a glamorous life, beam trawling. The men who do it

are quite kind of revered as being hard men, getting out there

and doing the job, but no-one does it for the glamour, believe me.

FOG HORN BLASTS

The Billy Rowney has a crew of six on rotation,

with four aboard and two ashore for each trip.

We try our best to keep that boat turning over.

It only ever spends one day in the harbour.

The more you can keep that boat at sea, the better it is

financially for everybody, not just myself,

because these things aren't cheap to run.

Monty will work on deck alongside three other crew.

Charlie Downing, is second mate, engineer, and deckhand.

Born in nearby Mousehole, Charlie's been fishing since his early 20s.

Grimsby-born deckhand Jamie Vickers and deckhand

and cook Danny Fisher from Fleetwood, both moved

to Newlyn after the fishing industry in their hometowns collapsed.

Once a fisherman, always a fisherman.

It's in your blood, always has been.

I mean, my dad was a fisherman, me granddad was a fisherman,

me great-granddad was a fisherman, me great, great,

great-granddad was a fisherman, you know, me brother's a fisherman.

So it's, like I say, it's in your blood...and I just love the job.

Steve's under pressure to find richly populated

fishing grounds quickly.

Every mile he steams before deploying his nets

burns costly fuel.

Aye-aye, mate, aye-aye. Just coming up past the trees here, cap.

Just wonder what all the news was, mate.

He radios another skipper in the hope of information.

INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER

All right, thanks a lot, mate. Catch you later, cheers now.

Some of the skippers will tell you the honest truth,

some will tell you a little bit of truth.

And you've got to pick your bones out of it.

He's told me he's on five to six stone of monk

and a basket side of flats.

Which, this day, is a good living, like, you know, so to me, now,

I'm thinking, well, that'll do, that'll do for me as a start.

Over the next eight days, Monty will work alongside men whose

activities many believe are giving the fishing industry a bad name.

They're often portrayed as the villains, the larger boats

that are trawling, and hopefully over the next week or so,

I might be able to find out why,

and tell their story as opposed to just the smaller boats.

Obviously concerned about sea sickness,

but more concerned, I think, about giving a good account of myself.

I don't want to let myself down and I want to be a valid

member of this crew.

I want them to say it was good having me onboard because

he actually did a bit of work and he lightened the load on us.

Monty has suffered from chronic sea sickness in the past.

Deep sea trawling is going to push him to the limit.

If his sea legs hold up, he'd be all right, you know, because he's

keen to learn and when he gets a job he does it no problem, you know.

But the sea legs problem

and the green gills problem might sort of let him down a bit.

I'm gonna evens bet at the minute, I wouldn't like to go either way.

The Billy Rowney is now 50 miles south west of Newlyn

heading for it's fishing grounds in the deep Atlantic waters

south of the Isles of Scilly.

Far from the protection of land, conditions quickly deteriorate.

The tail-end of Hurricane Katia, a category 4 storm, which has battered

the east coast of the United States, has crossed the Atlantic.

At last, we're about to deploy the trawl and this is all happening

on a massive industrial scale and Steve's basically said to me

I need to stay up here on the bridge wing and just watch it happen.

All these huge bits, pulleys, winches,

hydraulics thrashing around as the deck moves beneath me

and this is definitely the best place to be I would say... CLUNK

Listen to that.

While fishing out of Cadgwith, Monty has used static pots

and nets which lie in wait for the fish to swim into them.

Trawling is entirely different.

A beam trawl consists of two nine-metre metal beams with chains

and nets attached which are lowered to the ocean floor

below a moving boat.

As the beams are dragged along, the heavy chains

scrape the seabed, scooping up everything in their path.

The target fish are those that inhabit the sea bed

such as plaice and sole.

They bury themselves in sand and mud but the chains flush them up

and into the net.

Beam trawling is seen by many as one of the most environmentally destructive forms of fishing.

But towing trawls or nets is undeniably efficient.

90% of the fish landed on our shores is caught using this method.

The nets are now fishing

and a relentless round the clock work pattern will soon begin.

We will haul those nets every two to three hours without fail

and get them back in the water as quick as we can.

You'll then process your fish, pick it up, gut it, clean it, stow it.

That's gonna take you an hour, so you'll get an hour back after

if you're lucky, if there's no trouble - no splits in the nets -

you'll get an hour back aft to have a cup of tea, have your fag,

bit of scran, and then I'll be calling you out

and we'll be doing the same again.

Constant operation, 24/7.

Catch your sleep when you can, meals when you can.

That's what it's all about, you're not out there to sit down

and wait for the fish to come to you, you're going to the fish.

The more hauls you can get in, the better for everyone.

The thing about this job is there's no night or day

when we're out there, it's just work.

It doesn't matter if it's three o'clock in the morning or the afternoon -

we're working until the minute we get back to the harbour.

12 hours after leaving Newlyn, the nets are ready to be

hauled for the first time.

The first shift in rough seas will be a real test for Monty's sea legs.

There we go.

HE COUGHS

HE VOMITS

HE WRETCHES

-MAN BURPS

-Excuse me.

Incapacitated by seasickness, Monty cannot contribute.

Unable to continue any longer, he leaves the deck.

In the wheelhouse, Steve is unimpressed - and unsympathetic.

How's Monty been doing? How HASN'T he been doing, I should say.

Not very well at the moment, by the looks of it.

I'm afraid at the moment he is stuck, because we ain't going back

until we've got wages and the boat with fish in it, you know, so...

that boy's going to have to get his sea legs somehow or later.

You just feel a complete muppet.

Deeply humiliating. It's crushing!

Unless you can make it on a fishing boat

and work effectively, the fishermen out here, you know...

They don't really respect you unless you can do that.

Some passenger is just hurling over the side

and lying in his bunk pointless, just dead weight.

When the trawler's on the surface it's not earning money.

After fishing for three hours,

it takes the crew just 15 minutes to empty and redeploy it.

At 3:00am, just two hours after the last haul, Monty is back on deck.

You'll find it easier facing forward rather than aft.

Right. Right.

-Sorry Charlie, I'm going to have to take a second.

-Are you all right?

Despite his best efforts, he succumbs to sickness once again.

-Ooh...

-MONTY RETCHES

Nice roll...

I don't know whether you're praying for fish or what there...

-Praying for something.

-Praying for something.

There's nowt worse than being sick out here. Sea sickness.

-Charlie, I'm just going to have to sit here, sorry.

-Yeah, all right.

Just got to get better, you know.

I'm 12 hours into this, and this is eight days.

And I've got to contribute as well -

it's no good being like this all the time.

Pathetic.

Out for the count.

70 miles off shore, and with no hope of returning to land soon,

the next week will be the toughest of his life

unless his condition improves.

Worse weather is forecast in a few days.

Monty battles through the next 18 hours.

-How many hands you got, Monty?

-Two.

-Righto.

Individual species are sorted in separate bins.

Anything that has no commercial value is thrown back.

Come on Monty, two hands. Come on.

By the second evening, Monty has begun

to acclimatise to the boat's motion, and his condition is improving.

Dare I say I'm starting to feel a little bit better, you know.

Each haul, I'm just trying to do a little bit more.

But now's the time I need to start digging in

and actually contributing.

This is monk, these are turbot.

Megrims, plenty of crabs...

The waters off the southwest coast, warmed by the Gulf Stream,

are the most diverse fishing grounds in the UK.

I'll catch anything from monkfish, Dover soles, lemon soles,

megrims, ling, cod, haddock,

ray, eels, gurnards,

pouts... It's really good for us, we're never actually

targeting one species all the time. It is good.

Like all fishing boats in the EU,

the Billy Rowney operates under strict quota restrictions.

But because she has quota for a wide range of species,

she can spend as many as 300 days at sea each year.

Boats in less diverse fisheries can go to sea for far fewer days.

-Hold him like that.

-Yeah.

-You get your fingers in behind him

right in the gill...

Just try and get everything out -

-swim bladder, gall bladder...

-Right.

There he is, nice and clean. That's it.

-Is that all right?

-Yeah.

The fish will not be sold on the market for another eight days,

so it must be iced and stowed below decks.

-Four monk...

-Monty relays how much has been caught so far.

-Two of plaice...

-Two of plaice.

-One haddock...

-One haddock.

This information is critical for Steve

in deciding whether to stay put, or to steam elsewhere in the hope of a better return.

-One bag of shells.

-One bag of shells.

-That's it.

-Lovely.

Unlike inshore boats, restricted to fishing their local waters,

these trawlers can travel large distances in search of a bigger catch.

Steve decides to remain where he is, for the time being at least.

Able to eat his first meal since leaving Cadgwith two days ago,

Monty's hard work has only just begun.

Over the next six days, he'll be expected to complete a further 40 shifts.

Day 3. Monty begins to understand the true demands

of working on a deep sea trawler.

Sort of between hauls at the moment...

It feels rather like someone's

shoved a cheese and onion crisp

under each eyelid.

This is a little haven for me -

just come back to this little space,

to the coffin-like compartment,

and just try and get a bit of sleep

and get ready for the next one.

Right, let's get this show on the road here and get the man up.

Day 4, 2am.

Charlie has been on watch, and wakes up Monty for the next shift.

Monty, it's time to get out your pit.

-All looking good.

-All good?

Beam trawlers are non-selective, ploughing the sea bed

and indiscriminately scraping up everything in their path.

Many of the species landed on deck have no commercial value -

these are known as by-catch and are not kept.

27 million tonnes of by-catch, one third of the total global landings,

are dumped overboard every year.

The amount of fish that's being brought on board,

compared to the amount that's being shovelled back over the side -

the by-catch essentially, the discard -

was a bit of a shocker, actually.

And to be doing it myself,

to be physically shovelling the stuff back over, you know,

I found really difficult,

and in a way I almost shut down quite early on

and thought, right, I just need to get on with it and get the job done.

One stone of doris!

-Two gurnard.

-Two gurnards.

One and a quarter of turbot.

The crew are now halfway through the trip.

This evening's tally

has covered the fuel now - with a bit of luck, if the price is OK.

It's covered the fuel plus a little bit extra,

so for the next four days, if everything goes all right

and we don't break down or nothing, now we're starting to make wages.

Fuel is so dear at the moment.

The running costs, just the fuel alone is shaping up £1,000 a day.

I've got to find that before anybody gets a penny. So, er...

The crew have now caught £10,000 worth of fish -

just enough to cover fuel costs for the boat's eight days at sea.

Fuel prices are constantly rising - fish prices are not.

Today's trawler skippers are under pressure to fish harder

and for longer than ever before.

The bad weather has abated, for now at least.

-Just make sure all that is inside. All right?

-Yeah.

About the ties first cod end,

he's been practising on a bit of twine in the galley.

-So nothing can come through.

-Yeah.

The cod end of the net contains the catch.

If the securing knot fails,

three hours of fishing will have been in vain and hundreds of pounds lost.

Now, the time of truth is here, eh? Seven o'clock, we'll soon find out.

For the next three hours, I think all of us will be

on tenterhooks waiting to see if the cod end comes undone.

Marine or no marine, we'll kick his ass all over the deck.

Monty is nicking crab claws to prevent them from fighting

and becoming damaged when stored.

Skipper Steve is keeping a watchful eye.

He frightens me doing them crabs.

He's forcing the knife, he's got the claw and he's forcing the knife,

and if he slips or the claw shoots, he'll stab himself.

He's there like this at the moment.

What's going to happen, it's happened loads of times,

the top claw will come off and all he'll do,

his hand's there, it will go straight into his hand.

And we'll have a mess.

You're not just five minutes down the road from any medical facility.

This far off, it's a helicopter,

there's no other way they'll get to you, you know.

You're constantly watching them, afraid they going to do something.

There's so many things that can go wrong in this job.

You have to be so alert with it.

They think everything is OK and it's not.

So, for me, if that man comes with me,

for the first six months or more, I'm on edge,

wanting to know where he is, what he's doing, making sure he's OK.

There are more injuries on deep sea boats than any other fishing vessel

and three quarters of all fatalities in the fishing industry

occur on boats like the Billy Rooney.

What you're towing on is 23...

I think ours is 23 or it's 26 mil warps - wires. You know.

They port, they could chop you in half. No messing.

If one of them ports and hits you, you're dead straight away.

There's no ifs or buts.

It's one of them jobs where

if you turn your back on it for a second,

it can hurt you and real hurt you.

Aboard me, I've had a few broken bones and a few slips and hurts.

I haven't had anything major, and I don't like talking like that

because it does, in my eyes, I don't like tempting fate

and I think it is when you start talking along those lines.

The nets are brought to the surface once again.

It's time to see if Monty's cod end knot has held.

The relief is considerable.

HE LAUGHS

OK! Below!

Plunged into darkness, the deck, because the generator has gone.

And it's... One of the things that comes across very powerfully

-is this whole operation...

-Stay where you are.

-Yeah. No problem.

BEEP

There you are, generator's back on.

If the generator doesn't work,

if it breaks and can't be fixed, end of fishing.

If the ice machine breaks and it can't be fixed, end of fishing.

The hydraulics go and it can't be fixed.

So the whole thing does run on this knife edge, all the time.

We're on that generator at the moment.

That one there has shut down. We can only run one at a time.

Charlie has been forced to switch to the emergency generator.

If this fails, the boat will be without power

and the trip abandoned.

Cod fishing requires a lot of skill in a lot of areas.

Because the numbers of the crew are dropping.

So, you don't just have a dedicated mechanic and that's all he does.

Like Charlie, he does watches, he's a mechanic, he's a deckhand,

and that's the way it is around the fleet.

A lot of skill involved in being a modern fisherman on one of these big trawlers.

Day six.

As the weather freshens, Steve listens to the shipping forecast.

'The area forecast for the next 24 hours,

'White, Portland, Plymouth - variable three or four at first in White.

'Otherwise, West or Southwest 5 to 7.

'Rain or squally showers, good, occasionally poor.'

It's not good news.

Probably similar to what it was the first 24 hours we were here.

Er, I think it's best we keep that quiet.

Just tell him it's going to be a nice 2 to 3,

he'll be happy then, he'll keep smiling.

40 mph winds and rough seas are imminent.

For 48 hours, Monty and the crew battle against the elements.

Extreme weather is simply part of the job for these men.

But the crew often endure far worse conditions.

Frightening. Really frightening.

When you've got 40, 50 foot waves smashing over you,

and it's filling the deck up.

It's not for the fainthearted. Put it that way.

You know, when one wave hits across the deck, you can be knocked

off your feet, washed overboard, you can be knocked about the deck.

'No, it's not very nice weather to be stuck in. Things can go wrong.'

Everything board the boat is put to its maximum stress

when you start getting tons and tons of water drop aboard the boat.

I'm told...

I'm told I'm being a total lightweight about the whole thing.

If you were with the Cadgwith boys now, mate,

you'd be tucked up in a pub with a nice pint in your hand.

It just makes life so much trickier, you know.

You're staggering around the deck.

People pay thousands and thousands of pounds to come out here,

you know, on cruises.

-So, you'd classify this as a cruise?

-Yeah.

Just, uh,...

Just got in...

from, uh, the worst one yet.

Sunday, I'm so close to finishing. But...

That was force six, gusty force eight, uh, force eight.

Steve said they know the cabin wind is force eight. That's gusty.

Massive seas. And you're just all over the place.

You're thrown from side to side and you're knackered, anyway. And...

Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Most of the other boats fishing in these waters have headed for the shelter of harbour.

But Steve is undeterred.

Bad weather is a good thing for me.

Because I'm on a slightly bigger vessel than most of them,

in the bad weather, smaller boats will be left

and can't work the weather.

Less fish on the market. That's good for me.

If I can come in with mine, they want it, they need it.

Good prices.

It's the evening of day six.

Deckhand Danny has a roast in the oven.

Until recently, boats like the Billy Rooney had a dedicated cook.

Danny, may I say, outstanding chef.

He has a rare gift, this man, he's wasted.

You haven't seen nothing, yet.

Originally, there would have been six men on that boat, working all the time.

But with rising costs, we had to change with it.

We couldn't keep six men because six men weren't getting a viable wage.

We had to go to five. Then eventually, we went to four.

I get the impression, you're sort of on the bare bones, now.

The minimum number of boats manned by the minimum number of people

to operate effectively.

-Yeah.

-If we lost one more person from this crew,

I can't see how you could operate with a three-man crew.

-You couldn't.

-Yeah, it would just be a man breaker.

-Well, you could.

You could. But you'd be up all the time, you know.

You know. If you're up 18, 19 hours a day, it's a long day.

-You know me, Danny, I can deal with that.

-Oh, yeah.

I know you can, Monty, yeah.

But like I say, you could work this boat three-handed. But...

You know, if Steve turned around to me and says,

"We're going three handed," I'd say, "Sorry, Steve, I'm not going."

-You know.

-Just, you think it would be too much?

It's not too much, it's too dangerous.

-Yeah.

-Someone will get hurt and they will get badly hurt, if not killed.

The weather has calmed.

Steve has asked Monty to take a watch in the wheelhouse.

That's your two track plotters,

that's an olex system which is a 3D ground mapping system.

-Right.

-You've got two radars in this wheelhouse.

You've got your sounder which tracks the bottom

and your obstructions will come up.

You've basically got six screens and you've got to watch them all.

Dragging the beam trawls over wrecks or rough ground

can cause thousands of pounds of damage.

In the worst cases, can terminate a trip.

Basically you've got a giant set of scales here.

If you get two weights on one side,

if you flick one off what happens with your scales? They'll roll.

You'll be fishing along, nice weather,

going along and all of a sudden the boat will stop.

She'll tip and all of a sudden you're fast into something.

-I've had boulders aboard here the size of a mini.

-Right.

I've dropped aboard and they're not fun to get either.

But it does happen, you know.

What are you about to hand over to me,

for me to do my two hour watch, financially?

Financially, probably about a million quid.

But more than anything,

I'm handing over to you my life and the rest of the crew's life.

Which to me, is more than any monetary value at all.

-She's all yours, mate.

-Thank you very much.

-Right, see you in a bit.

-Smashing, cheers.

For the next three hours, Monty is left in charge of the boat.

There's a wreck on the plotter there and I've got all fixated on it.

The old auto-pilot there is quite sensitive, such a big vessel

and I'm just trying to guide her the other side of that wreck.

There's a big...container ship, HUGE container ship

and a little vessel in front of the container ship as well.

The fishing vessel is the Aaltje Adriantje

and the container ship is the Camellia Ace.

You'd think having all this technology would make life easier,

but actually for me personally,

it's just making life ten times more stressful.

The Billy Rowney is 40 years old, but the technology aboard her,

worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, is state of the art.

Fishermen use this not only to navigate, but also to hunt for fish.

High tech systems now allow skippers

to visualise the precise contours of the sea bed in 3D

and identify shoals of fish with pin point accuracy.

Britain's fleet may be aging and stocks declining,

but today's fishing boats are more efficient than ever.

The technology has got so great and so easily available,

that people are losing their skills.

You should, as a fisherman, be able to go out there

and catch a fish without any of that stuff.

As long as they can press the buttons

and understand how the electronics work,

they can catch all the fish that I've took a lifetime

to create me own knowledge.

It would be ideal

if we could step back to the end of the Second World War. You could do very nicely,

there was plenty of fish to catch

and you didn't need a lot of technology to do it.

The fish were practically jumping in the boat.

We can't go back to those days.

You can't go back in the same way you can't go back to a countryside

that's not littered with motorways.

You can't un-introduce smoking into the country,

you can't turn the clock backwards.

After completing his watch, Monty is back on deck.

To protect stocks, cod quota is severely limited in these waters.

Boats can't land more than 150 kilos per month.

With the Billy Rowney's quota reached after just two hauls,

the crew have had no option

but to throw back every extra cod they catch, most of it dead.

But Steve has now received a Telex from the boats owners,

informing him that they've managed to lease more cod quota.

It's all very nice, we've got 300 kilos to catch extra,

but it's a pity we didn't get it till yesterday.

All week, we've been chucking cod away.

We must have chucked, I reckon,

in the region of nearly 400/ 500 kilo of cod away this week.

Declining fish stocks means ever more stringent quotas.

The only way for fishermen to legally land more fish,

is to lease more quota.

There is quota that's on the market to buy and sell

of different species of fish.

Some is easy to come by and some isn't,

but it looks as if our office

has managed to find a little bit of private cod leased quota to buy.

Rising costs and restrictive quotas

means growing numbers of deep-sea fishermen

are choosing to sell their boats but hold on to their quota,

making a much easier living simply by leasing it out.

Yeah, it's definitely a financial investment to own quota.

If you've got ten ton of cod that you could sell,

you've got a really good investment.

It's a money-making thing, you know?

The system brought in to protect fish stocks

has evolved into a valuable financial commodity.

Making a living from the deep sea has never been tougher.

In the past 25 years,

Britain's offshore fishing fleet has almost halved in size.

They had 23 beamers when I first came down here, there's not 23 now.

I think there's only about nine, ten, if that.

In another ten years, I don't think there'll be a fishing fleet here.

Some people have just had enough, you know?

There's so many laws now,

it's not a simple case of just going out, shooting nets,

catching fish and coming in.

There's a lot of paperwork that if it isn't done right,

there's a lot of big fines.

A lot of people just don't want that,

people used to just go out, fishermen, go out,

go and do what they had to do, catch fish, come into the market,

land it, lovely,

but it's just not quite as cut and straight as that any more.

After eight days at sea,

the nets are ready to be hauled for the last time.

You'll notice with any crew,

from the moment I say, "Last haul, boys, we're on the way home,"

everybody's mood raises hundredfold, you know?

They call it getting the channels,

and you'll get people who'll be tired all week, won't speak,

won't talk to nobody, and the moment that gear comes aboard,

everybody's best of mates

and everybody's talking all the time, can't stop.

# Every day would be the first day of spring... #

Oh, what a voice!

# Every heart would have a new song to sing... #

There you are, Monty, hidden talents, pal.

Blimey!

After being struck down by seasickness

at the beginning of the trip, Monty has survived the week,

completing more than 40 shifts on deck.

For hour after hour, day after day

I've lowered fish through that hatch, big tubs full of fish.

This is a phenomenal fishing machine that I'm on at the moment,

a beam trawler,

and it's fished non-stop for seven days, 24 hours a day,

and of course it's just one of a fleet of vessels

working this water at the moment.

The scale's beyond anything I've ever seen before,

certainly way beyond anything at Cadgwith,

and you do have to ask questions about the sustainability of that.

You know, can that level of fishing

be sustained long-term into the future,

can the environment deal with it?

13 of haddocks.

13 of haddock!

Four octopus.

Four octopus!

18 species fill 165 boxes.

Amongst them are two tons of megrim sole,

over a ton of monkfish and 300 kilos of highly-prized Dover sole.

Four and a quarter of cod!

Tally ho!

In total, the Billy Rowney has caught six tons of fish.

Over eight days and nights on deck, Monty has grown close to the crew,

men who are becoming increasingly vilified for the job they do.

There is a bit of a reputation down here, you know.

The trawling fleet in particular are made out to be

the kind of villains and all that.

How do you feel about that, personally?

Well, I wouldn't call us villains myself.

You know, we're just honest working men doing an honest working day.

A villain is someone who breaks into someone's house or who stabs people,

who causes trouble, they're villains.

We don't cause trouble.

we're like a farmer, we're reaping the sea bed.

Yeah.

You don't class a farmer as a villain

because he's reaping the land.

Us, they're calling us villains cos we're reaping the sea bed.

Yeah.

I wouldn't say there's the abundance that there was 20 years ago, no,

but on the same token there's still plenty of fish out there,

there's still plenty of fish to be caught.

I've got another 20 years of this game.

Hopefully I'll win the lottery before I get that far,

but, yeah, you know, I want it sustainable,

so does every other man that's down that pier

wants a sustainable fishery,

we just need to find that happy medium

between the science and then the fishing,

and we will, it'll be OK eventually.

I must say that all week on board Cadgwith has seemed a million miles away,

literally and figuratively as well,

and suddenly it isn't.

That's the Lizard Lighthouse just out there,

and obviously, just around the corner, it's 6.50am now,

so the boys will just be pushing the boats off the beach,

and the Cadgwith fleet will be coming to life,

getting ready for another day's fishing.

I think I've got better perspective on that fleet now than I've ever had.

Ah...

This is an operation on an entirely different scale,

we've caught as much this week than the Cadgwith fleet will catch

in it's entirety during a course of a week like this,

and I just can't wait to get back there and back to Razorbill.

I was horrified when the first trawl came up

and I saw what was on the deck, and unequivocally,

you had carved a furrow in the sea floor and removed that whole eco-system

and unequivocally, there's a big impact there.

As the week went on, I began to appreciate,

to catch fish in that volume and feed the market,

you have to fish on a massive scale, you just have to do it.

The demand's not going to go away

and somehow you've got to feed that demand.

Trawlermen are hard-working men and they operate within the rules,

they're the victims of a flawed system,

but...

to tar this whole group of men with this same brush of saying

they're all villains and environmental hooligans,

they're not, they're definitely not,

'they're fishermen and they're decent men trying to earn a living.'

-Thank you so much for having me...

-You're welcome.

..really, really appreciate it.

-All the best.

-Take it easy. Bye now. See you later.

He did well, Monty, I'd sail with him again.

I would, you know,

cos he was a bit slow, you know,

but, I mean, you don't have to go at it 99 miles an hour, you know.

Yeah, he done very well. It was a pleasure sailing with him.

Early the following morning, the catch is processed ready for market.

All this furious activity you can see going on behind me,

you've got to bear in mind it's from one catch from one boat

the Billy Rowney.

How reliant all of these guys are on boats going out and working,

and how many jobs each trip creates.

It's estimated that every fisherman at sea creates four jobs on land.

350 to start, 350, 360, 370, 380...

380, 390...

The auction is underway and high prices are being paid for the Billy Rowney's catch.

Steve's decision to work through bad weather has paid off.

Today, his is the only trawler selling on the market

and the fish are fetching top prices.

60 to go here, 9lbs, 850.

-880.

-880, 890, 890 and 9.

He landed 160 boxes, made 32,000. I mean, I was delighted, you know.

I didn't expect that, to be honest with you. Er, yeah.

Because there wasn't that much fish there and there hadn't been that much fish though the week

because we had had bad weather.

It worked in our favour that when we did get there, the boys wanted it,

they needed it to fill their orders - good for me, lovely job.

We rubbed our hands, we went away with a week's work everybody was happy with.

The only thing that killed us is the fuel in that trip,

the fuel cost me a fortune that trip. If we hadn't have had them good prices that morning...

that could have been a disaster for us, to be honest with you.

After expenses and the owner's cut is subtracted, the trawler's crew members

receive their share, around £2,000 each for the eight-day trip.

Many small boat fishermen would be lucky to earn this in a month.

For now at least, there's still good money to be made fishing off shore.

I mean, money's not everything,

it's the satisfaction of doing the job and being in a successful boat,

you know, it's job satisfaction,

that's how I look at it.

Back in Cadgwith, Monty is heading out with Nigel his mentor

and skipper of Razorbill.

Morning, Nige, I'm back, the trawlerman's back.

How did it go?

Just don't ask, because I don't even want to talk about it..

-You survived.

-..like a combat veteran.

-Yeah, I mean first couple of days...

-Earring, earring yet?

-Not as yet, no.

-Tattoos?

-Working on the beard.

I'll smoke rollies now.

Totally different motion of the boat and again, it just polished me off, but after that...

-It's just different world, ain't it?

-It really is.

And you know, despite what they might say about those big boats,

you've got to take your hat off for those boys doing what they do.

-They are hard men.

-They are doing and working, they are working.

I just can't begin to tell you how nice it is to be back.

Well, when I used to turn over at night and just sort of switch the electric blanket off,

-I used to think, "I wonder where those boys are now."

-Oh!

Look at that, look at that!

I've lost none of my magic! LAUGHTER

So are you signing up for another trip then, Mont?

Never!

I said all credit to them, hard as nails.

He may never go out on a beam trawler again,

but at least Monty's seen how one boat

in one fishery works under one set of regulations,

and he now looks at Cadgwith in a very different light.

'I really have returned here

'a different man from the man who went out on the beam trawler.

'I think I've got a much better appreciation of what goes on

'with this little fishing fleet out of Cadgwith.

'To return to a place that fishes entirely sustainably,

'fishes on a daily basis, that uses static gear, that is a model

'of an environmental approach to fishing,

'is just an absolute pleasure.'

There's an overwhelming impression as I stepped off the trawler

and that's that this is a large scale of fishing,

which does pay off financially,

but of course you've got that big question of sustainability around it,

and as you look at the boats behind me here,

that simply isn't a question.

The way the Cadgwith fleet operates is low impact, sustainable style fishing, but does it pay?

The one thing I hear again and again is that financially, the fleet are struggling,

and in a perfect world it would be lovely to marry up

that sustainable form of fishing with a decent economic return

or even just making a half decent living out of it.

That's a question I really think I'd like to pursue in the future.

Next time, Monty meets one of the most successful inshore fishermen in Britain.

Hey! Whoa, look at that.

He follows fish from the sea to the city.

I've been chucking that dog fish over the side of my boat

ever since I started fishing.

And he heads overseas to look for new ways of supporting our small boat fleet.

I take pride in the fish I land.

This fish will be right to the consumer by this afternoon.

-Right. In and out, no messing about, fresh fish.

-Yep.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd