A small flotilla of gaily coloured fishing boats line the shingle beach at Hastings, East Sussex. Behind them are the bulldozers that shunt them into the waves and beyond, in neat rows, are black wooden fishermen\u2019s huts and fish stalls, where on a good day teenage daughters, wives and retired skippers sell some of the day\u2019s catch.<\/p>\n
This is the Stade, a Saxon word for \u201clanding place\u201d from where wooden boats have set off since before William the Conqueror arrived in 1066.<\/p>\n
But a decline in Britain\u2019s fishing industry has hit many coastal communities hard. Hastings, home to one of the UK\u2019s oldest fleets and the largest beach-launched fleet in Europe, is one of the worst hit. The fleet, which had 53 registered boats in 2015, has 18 today,<\/a> a drop of 66%. Of them, most lie idle, the fishers say.<\/p>\n \u201cFishing has nosedived here,\u201d says Peter White, 67, who has fished since he left school at 15. \u201cA lot of people have left. From here all the way up the eastern channel as far as Whitstable. Harbours are empty, boats are gone. Fishing is on the floor. These boats haven\u2019t been at sea for a month.\u201d<\/p>\n No one is at sea today, due to westerly winds, which worsen the further out you go, he says, and even on a good day, there\u2019s less than eight active.<\/p>\n These small \u201cunder 10\u201d metre boats are the backbone of the UK industry; they represent 79% of the fleet<\/a> and reportedly provide<\/a> half of catch-related jobs. But in England between 2008 and 2022, they declined in numbers by 22%, nearly double the 13% fall in larger boats, according to research by Newcastle University and the University of Plymouth published this year.<\/a> Over the same period, vessels under 10 metres also spent 43% less days at sea.<\/p>\n The fishers in Hastings who spoke to the Guardian blamed multiple factors for the decline, including marine heatwaves affecting fish populations, unsustainable quotas that dictate what and how much they can fish and larger trawlers further out in the North Sea \u201chammering\u201d fish stocks.<\/p>\n In White\u2019s family, fishing goes back a century. But neither of his two daughters fish, and with most on the Stade in their sixties, he fears he is one of Hasting\u2019s last fishers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to die out,\u201d says White. \u201cFish shops are disappearing right left and centre.\u201d<\/p>\n He is semi-retired, but still fishes with his nephew, Darren, 49, on his boat, the RX56, the Sussex Girl. He loves being at sea more than he ever did. \u201cI have a pension and no mortgage to pay, so there is no pressure,\u201d he says. \u201cMost fishermen don\u2019t do it for the money, they do it for the life.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hastings Fishermen\u2019s Protection Society, set up in 1831 to preserve the fishing community\u2019s right to work from the beach, has helped train 10 young people over the past decade. All except one have left for better-paying jobs elsewhere.<\/p>\n Shane Ball, 32, whose father is a fisher, left reluctantly in November for a job as a maintenance man. \u201cAll I ever wanted to do was fish,\u201d he says. \u201cI skippered for 12 years.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it came time to get a mortgage. When you go out to sea, you have to pay the fuel and the crew. Sometimes, you are literally burning the diesel for nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n Shane Ball out at sea on a 12-hour fishing trip with his father, Robert \u2018Podgy\u2019 Ball, on their boat, the Bethan Louise, in 2017<\/p>\n The cost of fuel has rocketed, as have other costs after health and safety rules<\/a> imposed on the small boats by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency in 2023.<\/p>\n In May, the struggling sector was dealt a further blow after a \u201cBrexit reset<\/a>\u201d deal between the European Union and the UK. Fishers condemned the deal as a \u201cbetrayal\u201d because it granted large EU vessels 12 years of access to UK territorial waters, right up to where the small boats fish at six miles from the coast, a year before the existing deal was due to expire. Alongside the deal, the government announced a \u00a3360m fund<\/a> to modernise the fleet, boost exports and support communities.<\/p>\n Mark Ball, 62, who fishes with his son Jamie, 30, the youngest of the Hastings crew, says earning have plummeted in the past decade. \u201cThe only way we can maintain the boat now is if we take it out of savings.\u201d<\/p>\n Mike Cohen, the CEO of the National Federation of Fishermen\u2019s Organisations, says the Brexit<\/a> reset deal \u201cwas a big blow\u201d that surrendered the best prospect fishing communities had to grow.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got our little boats fishing alongside 30m-plus Spanish, French, Portuguese boats and Dutch and Danish in some places too, that can stay at sea in all weathers, fish around the clock and stay at sea for a week or fortnight in weather that our boats can\u2019t get out from port. They can\u2019t compete.<\/p>\n \u201cWe gave away access to waters and we got absolutely nothing back.\u201d<\/p>\n Cohen has called for a national strategy for fishing and marine food production, and to deploy the \u00a3360m fishing and coastal growth fund where needed.<\/p>\n Joe Lee\u2019s boat, the Maria Louise, being launched from the Stade in 2021. Fishers say small boats cannot compete with larger EU trawlers that can stay out far longer and in worse weather<\/p>\n Last week, scientists from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, advised a 77% reduction in fishing of North East Atlantic mackerel to prevent population collapse<\/a>. Conservationists point to a lack of a unified management plan between countries to prevent overfishing. Catch limits between EU countries and the UK in the region have consistently exceeded limits recommended by scientists.<\/p>\n