'We want a better deal': talking Brexit aboard a fishing trawler

Twenty miles off the coast of Cornwall lies one of the most fiercely contested Brexit battlelines. Do UK fishermen still want out? Out of an apocalyptic yellow sky a salvo of white missiles rains down, plummeting into an angry black sea. Gannets, here for a free lunch. It's hauling time on Crystal Sea, and for any young gurnard or whiting small and determined enough to wriggle free at this stage, just before the net is lifted from the water, liberty is short-lived. The escapee is snatched, underwater, then launched rudely up into the sky where it quickly disappears, headfirst, into a seabird, accompanied by a triumphant squawk. This is not a good place to be a fish.The birds are joined by dolphins, in from the flank, five or six of them, leaping joyfully from the face of a wave. They like the company, the skipper Dave Stevens likes to think, and he likes theirs; it's reassuring. They're not here for a meal, though - they're here for the show. And what a spectacle it is, all that colour and splashing and dive-bombing. It's beautiful and thrilling, horrific and terrifying, all at the same time. What a racket, too: the avian screeching, the grinding of the trawler's main power winch, the metallic clanking of chain and trawl doors, the howl of a south-westerly force 7. There's a bit of human yelling, too, men trying to be heard above the elements. Continue reading...