Fishing’s in the blood for family waiting for a recovery
TO BE a fisherman you must have it in your blood, says shellfisherman Jason Harrison.
His father Robbie – who owns a salmon boat in Scarborough Harbour among other ventures – has just landed a catch of hefty sea trout from his boat, as the younger Harrison finishes up after a day’s fishing off Flamborough Head.
On Mr Harrison’s mother’s side, fishing goes back 100 years to the Jenkinsons Filey fishing clan. His young sons, Charlie, six, and Oscar, seven, are already keen fishermen. It is also hard, physical work – deckhand Gareth
Evans says it is like going to the gym – and unsociable hours.
“You don’t find many fat fishermen”, says Mr Harrison.
Making a lot of money in short order can prove too big a temptation to many.
Last year, Mr Harrison says he went through about 20 wouldbe members of crew, adding: “You give them £2,000 for five days work and they are in the pub drinking all weekend. Then they tell you they slept in, but somebody saw them on Facebook at 4am.”
Just as it was getting light, he set off from Scarborough Harbour with Mr Evans, and together they hauled 400 pots, bringing in a box and a half of lobsters and two of crab.
It is not a great result, when you consider Mr Harrison’s record catch – 20 tonne of crab and 500 kilogrammes of lobsters caught over four-and-a half-days and which fetched £70,000.
Today there has been a lot of “soft” and “berried” – egg-bearing – lobsters to throw back in. “Too many,” adds Mr Evans.
June, despite clear blue skies and calm seas, is a wash-out for shellfishermen, as lobsters go into their holes, while they are shedding their shells.
The fleet has been back out fishing for the past few weeks, but the coronavirus pandemic means demand and prices are down, with restaurants and hotels still closed in the UK and abroad. As in Bridlington, much of the catch goes for export.
However, the industry is ticking over – people selling from vans have apparently been doing a roaring trade.
And as if to signal that recovery is just round the corner a huge truck from Brittany pulls onto the pier.
It will do the rounds of the local shellfish ports in Yorkshire, picking up thousands of live lobsters to store in its huge tanks full of fresh seawater, before catching the ferry back to Roscoff.
“To get the true value of lobsters and crabs we need the demand but the demand isn’t there,” said Mr Harrison, who has only had his new boat – New Venture – for a month.
“But things are opening up slowly.”