It had been a dream of Mitch’s since we opened the first Rockfish in Dartmouth way back in 2010, to have his own boat landing fresh fish to the restaurant. 

Catching and cooking our own fish, owning the process, from wheelhouse to kitchen, bringing seafood in each day, and serving it sea fresh - it was an unbelievable ambition and an offering totally unique to any restaurant group across the country.

Then, in summer 2019 we had the opportunity to turn that dream into a reality.

We teamed up with Nick Fisher. Nick was the perfect partner to undertake this immense project with. Nick had been a fishing broadcaster in the 90s for his own hugely popular Channel 4 show Screaming Reels, he’d presented a fishing radio show Dirty Tackle for Five Live, he’d been a regular contributor to all the top national magazines and newspapers on the subject of fish and fishing and had written weighty tomes on the subject too. Nick loved fish!

Nick, along with his business partner, Jamie Mcdonald, agreed to underwrite the Rockfisher. And for some years the dream became a living reality.

Fish were caught along the South Coast between Dartmouth and the Isle of Wight, and plonked fresh at our Brixham HQ. It was epic!

We caught turbot, and brill, and monkfish, and red mullet. Squid and cuttlefish. Great big rays and sweet delicate plaice.

You wouldn’t believe the extraordinary range of species one little boat could yield just fishing for a few hours a couple of miles out of the harbour mouth.

We took part in science projects run by Plymouth University, helped government organisations monitor fish stocks, and aided in real-world research on fishing methods that contributed to actual change.

And then, tragically, in 2022, Nick took his own life. You might remember last year we commemorated the two year anniversary of his death by sponsoring his son, Rex, to row 3000 miles across the Atlantic ocean in a boat we aptly named The Rockfisher 2.

Since, Nick’s family have helped us manage the boat. But recent years have not been plain sailing for UK fishing.

In many respects the Rockfisher did exactly what we wanted. Its job was not just to catch fish but to provide us with a porthole into this once proud and respected industry. A hand on the tiller. An ear in the engine room. A view - warts, barnacles and all - that was not just speculative, but informed and involved.

The Rockfisher was part of the UK’s under 10m trawler fleet – the largest segment of commercial fishing boats in the UK. These smaller boats make up about 79% of all fishing vessels, but in the last few years the fleet has faced a significant decline.

This decline is happening at a much faster rate than for the larger boats. The loss is drastically affecting coastal areas, which rely heavily on this specific type of fishing, as they land the majority of their catch in the rural ports, compared with the much bigger boats.

These smaller boats are also more vulnerable to challenges like changing fish stocks, bad weather and the capacity to fish further afield. The UK’s domestic fishing industry has experienced a long-term decline with the number of fishermen plummeting from 25,000 in the 1980s to about 10,000 today. Consequently, the smaller boat fleet has also dropped from more than 10,000 vessels to just 5,400.

This is a tragedy. The fishing industry is disproportionally important to coastal communities, both for economic and cultural reasons. Look at any of our restaurant hometowns – Poole, Weymouth, Lyme Regis, Salcombe, Exmouth, Plymouth, Torquay or Poole – towns where generations of families have depended on fish and the sea for their livelihoods. 

For a long time we’ve maintained that it’s our small-scale fishing fleet that forms the backbone of sustainable seafood. It seems obvious, as it’s a trend seen across the food industry from fishing to farming, that the smaller, less industrial, producers face unleveled amounts of systemic pressure, yet are very often are the least environmentally impactful. 

Meanwhile, consumer demand continues to disfavour our home fleet. We just don’t eat enough fish. British consumption of seafood is well below the European average and much of what we do eat consists of 5 main species - salmon, cod, tuna, warm water prawns and haddock - a large portion of which are either farmed or imported from abroad. Home-caught alternatives such as megrim, gurnard, or mussels remain vastly under-appreciated.

The average age of a UK fisherman is 55 and the total number of fishermen has nearly halved in the last 30 years. Recent figures suggest OnlyFans pays more in UK corporation tax than the entire UK fishing industry contributes in total tax. According to various reports, OnlyFans pays around £149 million and the fishing industry’s total tax is estimated to be about £67 million in 2023. This is a depressing statistic. What have we come to?

Without wanting to sound like a soured old seadog, our young people have more of a chance making a career stripping to their knickers online than they do out catching kippers. 

However, it’s worth pointing out that studies also suggest that each fisherman creates 15 other jobs in the seafood trade on land.

We can vouch for that. From fish filleters, to kitchen porters and everyone in between: chefs, van drivers, fish-packers, and front of house staff - there is an army of people who benefit from the bounty of our fishermen.

But to keep our fishing industry alive, the next generation are going to have to fight for it. Is it worth the effort?

We think so. With so many jobs being swallowed up by AI there will be less and less work that’s future proof and sustainable. Fishing is brutal, it’s a tough existence and at times soul-destroying but, if respected and managed well and supported, it can never be replaced by a computer. It’s one of the last real hunter-gatherer jobs still left for a young person to explore.

But we have to see real system change. Ask almost any fishermen and they’ll tell you they came to it through family. Their father was a fisherman, their grandfather and beyond, they learnt the ropes as “young lads” working weekends and school holidays. But all that is now not just ended - but actually illegal. You can’t legally work on a fishing boat now until you’re 16. And the government insists you have to be in formal education until you’re 18. As a result, as well as the increasing hardship, less and less young people are entering the industry. The labour force is dwindling and the talent is just not being produced.

When that happens in any industry it stagnates and shrinks or reverts to cheap foreign labour opening opportunities for dubious practice and human exploitation.

We are beyond disappointed to close the chapter on our brilliant boat the Rockfisher. She set sail up-country to North Shields to live out the last of her days catching Dublin bay prawns (aka. langoustine) with one of the most honourable and hard working men we could possibly have met. 

They say the two best days of boat ownership are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. We don’t believe that. Sure, there is some relief, but there is also incredible sadness. Sadness wrapped in the loss of our friend Nick. And sadness too that an industry we love, respect and depend on so much, is in such dire straits. If the whole experience has done anything, it has inspired us at Rockfish to stick to the very morals that are at the foundation of this business. That is: to promote quality British seafood, sourced from quality local producers, and get this island nation back to a place where we are proud of this abundant and extraordinary industry.