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I<\/span>t\u2019s mid-morning on a rare calm day in Newlyn, Cornwall. Will Roberts is back at the quayside with a catch of mackerel to unload, having set off from the harbour before dawn. At 22, he is something of a rarity here, one of a handful of young fishers running his own small commercial boat from the port.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a magical feeling when you set out in the dark, with no one else around, and see the Milky Way in the sky above you,\u201d he says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine working in an office or somewhere indoors, and not be surrounded by all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Watching Roberts climb up the quay wall to land his catch is a group of potential new young recruits keen to learn more about career opportunities at sea. They are here as part of a taster day run by Seafood Cornwall Training and the Cornwall Fish Producers\u2019 Organisation (CFPO), with the aim of encouraging young people into fishing.<\/p>\n Q&A<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Show<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Over the next year, the Against the Tide project from the Guardian\u2019s Seascape team will be reporting on the lives of young people in coastal communities across England and Wales.<\/p>\n Young people in many of England’s coastal towns are disproportionately likely to face poverty, poor housing, lower educational attainment and employment opportunities than their peers in equivalent inland areas. In the most deprived coastal towns they can be left to struggle with crumbling and stripped-back public services and transport that limit their life choices.<\/p>\n For the next 12 months, accompanied by the documentary photographer Polly Braden, we will travel up and down the country to port towns, seaside resorts and former fishing villages to ask 16- to 25-year-olds to tell us about their lives and how they feel about the places they live.\u00a0<\/p>\n By putting their voices at the front and centre of our reporting, we want to examine what kind of changes they need to build the futures they want for themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n Cornwall has high levels of self-employed, part-time work, much of it tourism related, meaning many young people\u2019s job options are often poorly paid and insecure. Fishing is one of the anchors of Cornwall\u2019s year-round economy, worth \u00a3130m and responsible for 7,800 jobs across the supply chain, according to a report by the CFPO. Every fisher out at sea supports another 15 jobs onshore, from wholesalers to chefs dishing up the catch of the day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Newlyn\u2019s harbour \u2013 fishing plays a large part in Cornwall\u2019s year-round economy, worth \u00a3130m and responsible for 7,800 jobs across the supply chain<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Fisher Will Roberts, 22, on the quay at Newlyn. \u2018I couldn\u2019t imagine working in an office or somewhere indoors, and not be surrounded by all of this\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/span><\/p>\n A couple of fishing veterans show the group around the harbour, demonstrate some basic knots and splices and give them an insight into what can be a lucrative and long-term way of life, here on their home shores.<\/p>\n Fifty-three-year-old Nigel Taylor is from a village on the outskirts of Newlyn and has worked at sea for decades. \u201cWhen I was growing up, everybody had connections with the port, either working in it or around it or some sort of job connected to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Working-class kids, he says, could start at entry level straight from school and make a lot of money.<\/p>\n double quotation markMany members enjoy being part of a heritage industry \u2026 Fishing gives you an identity, a sense of belongingMatilda Phillips, Young Fishermen Network<\/p>\n \u201cWe used to be called three-day millionaires, because we were only out at sea for three days and could make a small fortune,\u201d he says. \u201cThat has changed \u2013 but there are still fish out there to catch and you can still make a very good living.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the National Careers Service, the average wage for a deckhand is between \u00a322,000 and \u00a330,000 a year but one of the older men tells the prospective fishers they could be earning \u201cup to \u00a340,000 to \u00a350,000 in a short space of time\u201d. The level of pay is eye-opening to the participants. Ranging in age from 14 to 22, their work situations read like a case study in Cornwall\u2019s low-wage job market \u2013 one works in Tesco, another in a holiday park that closes for the season, another in an ice-cream shop that is also shut for winter. Several have friends who have moved away to find better opportunities elsewhere. All want to stay in Cornwall, but doing a job that offers more than seasonal hours at minimum wage.<\/p>\n At the end of the tour, Tom Miller, 17, a labourer from Newquay, eagerly signs up to the 10-day training course that will provide the mandatory certificates needed to go to sea. \u201cPeople tend to think that fishing is just being cold and wet all the time,\u201d he says. \u201cI spent a lot of time as a kid fishing with my dad. I\u2019ve always really liked it, and so why not give it a go as a job? It\u2019s a more steady income than labouring jobs. And I love being out at sea. I honestly wouldn\u2019t care what the weather is like.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tom Miller, standing, top, and Guy Mitchell at the taster day for young people; Reece Kelly, left, can\u2019t wait to get started on a fishing boat; fisher Nigel Taylor, right, who has decades of experience at sea<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Reece Kelly, 22, who lives in Camborne, an inland town in the centre of Cornwall, also can\u2019t wait to get started. \u201cI am getting pretty bored working in a supermarket,\u201d he says. \u201cI love the sea and I like the idea of doing something outside in the open air that\u2019s a bit more exciting than Tesco.\u201d<\/p>\n For Matilda Phillips, 22, the success of the training course is proof that young people are keen to keep Cornwall\u2019s fishing industry alive. \u201cFishing gives young people the opportunity to stay here in Cornwall,\u201d she says. Phillips is from a fishing family in Cadgwith, a small cove on the Lizard peninsula, and helped set up the Young Fishermen Network (YFN) two years ago to support young people coming into the industry. It is the first network to focus on young fishers in the UK and now has more than 70 members in almost every port in Cornwall.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople talk about decline in fishing but what I see is an industry that\u2019s thriving. In Cadgwith there are six full-time boats all crewed by people under the age of 30,\u201d she says. \u201cMany members of the network really enjoy being part of a heritage industry that\u2019s gone on for hundreds of years, and the fact that fishermen are still highly respected in our communities and are at the centre of life in them. Fishing gives you an identity, a sense of belonging.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Becoming a fixture in Newlyn harbour\u2019s fishing scene has certainly been transformative for Roberts, who experienced mental health issues as a teenager and struggled at school. \u201cI had severe social anxiety and found it really hard to talk to people,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I started fishing, I didn\u2019t have a clue what I was doing and I didn\u2019t know anyone in the harbour. But then the older guys all started talking to me. They\u2019ve been amazing and given me so much help. My anxiety has pretty much disappeared now.\u201d<\/p>\n He <\/strong>even has his own YouTube channel, under the moniker the Cornish Fisherman, where his videos get more than 50,000 views. \u201cI am not sure why people like the videos so much, they are just me in the boat, having good days, having bad days. But I enjoy showing what my life is like,\u201d he says. \u201cThere aren\u2019t that many other fishermen using a rod and line like I do; this way of catching has been fading out. But people seem to want to buy fish that\u2019s been line-caught, so maybe it will become more popular again.\u201d Not too popular, though, he hopes. He turns the camera off when heading to his favourite catching grounds to keep his best locations a secret.<\/p>\n Cornwall has been battered by horrendous storms over the past few months, but Roberts has no plans to quit fishing anytime soon. \u201cThere are some older fishermen who meet up on a bench in front of the lifeboat station every day, just to chat and tell wild stories,\u201d he says. \u201cThey keep joking that one day it will be me sitting on that bench and I\u2019ll be the old man telling stories to the young folk. They are probably right \u2013 that probably will be me one day. Because once fishing is in your blood, it seems to stay there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s mid-morning on a rare calm day in Newlyn, Cornwall. Will Roberts is back at the quayside with a catch of mackerel to unload, having set off from the harbour before dawn. At 22, he is something of a rarity here, one of a handful of young fishers running his own small commercial boat from<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[6496,23286,11124,8710,20446,364,22830,4877,801],"class_list":{"0":"post-45113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-cornwall","9":"tag-cornwalls","10":"tag-exciting","11":"tag-fishing","12":"tag-lure","13":"tag-people","14":"tag-tesco","15":"tag-traditional","16":"tag-young"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What is the Against the tide series?<\/h4>\n
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