Mr. Dominic Rihan:

My organisation represents 14 or 15 of the large refrigerated sea water, RSW, vessels. They employ around 250 people. The problem they face is that even if mackerel recovers – it is a very resilient stock and the chances are that if people do the right thing it will recover - they will not have a crew to fish the stock. Those vessels require a very skilled crew. There are legal requirements to have qualified engineers and skippers to take a haul on board those boats. Those people do not grow on trees. They are not available. We cannot take people off the street, put them onto fishing boats and expect them to operate. The short-term issue is how those vessels will retain their crew. Without a crew, they do not have a vessel even when they have fish to catch. That is a stark situation for those boats in terms of where they will be in two or three years' time.