Arbroath’s last remaining white fish trawler has set sail for the final time.
The Crystal Tide, owned by lifelong fisherman John Swankie (66), has made its final voyage into the North Sea after changes to fishing regulations made its running and operation economically unviable.
Mr Swankie, who bought the boat from a fisherman in Fraserburgh in 1982, was resigned to selling the vessel to a private firm from Ballycastle in Northern Ireland after changes to fishing quotas made it impossible to run the boat without making a huge loss.
John told The Courier: “There are just too many regulations now and it has become unviable to run it.
“It has always been a double-purpose boat half the year it was fishing for prawns and such and the other half would be for haddock and cod but you can’t do that any more.
“It has got to the stage where you can’t make a living off it. It has been coming gradually but it has got steadily worse,” he went on.
“Up until about three years ago the boat was doing OK but now you have to make big holes in the net and it’s just not viable.”
John hails from a fishing family, like so many in Arbroath, and spent most of his days out at sea until he turned 50 in 1998.
He hasn’t skippered the ship in 15 years but leases the boat to a four- or five-man crew who sail it out of the harbour.
He added that the sale of the boat felt like the end of an era as the vessel was the last of its kind to operate out of the once-bustling harbour.
John said: “I’ve been doing this since I was 15 when I was sent out to sea. I’ve tried to hang on as long as I could but the last two to three years have been hard for the crew.
“The boat will never come back now because the infrastructure that’s needed to support it has gone as well. It will be quite sad when it goes. It feels like a personal loss.”
mdalziel@thecourier.co.uk