The corporate fisher is a male owner and manager of a fleet of large-scale and/or distant- water pelagic trawlers that operate in EU and non-EU waters and have freezing and/or processing facilities onboard. His company headquarters and home are in a large fishing and shipping port. Aged around 50, he may be the descendant of several generations of fishers who made boat ownership a business and gradually scaled up their operations. This may have been done by potentially, but not necessarily, changing from a family-owned and managed business to one with increasing corporate investments or working for a large fishing corporation without strong family links to the industry.
He has an advanced degree, and although he cares about fishing, he does not fish himself and focuses on running the business. Profitability is his main objective and preoccupation. Some of the fisheries he targets are MSC certified: he knows this is good for the environment but also for his company’s image. He admits that fishing has served him well, but times have become hard, and there is a lot more uncertainty in the sector now than in the past. Poor stock status for some species and the rocketing fuel and maintenance costs are putting severe pressure on the viability of the enterprise.
While he is committed to adhering to regulations, he suspects that some of the skippers who work for him flout some fishing regulations due to the financial pressures facing the industry and their desire to maximise earnings. He has many full-time employees, from captains to deckhands, cooks, and mechanics on board. Their salaries have stagnated and keeping them happy is not always easy. Staff issues are a big headache: higher costs for protective gear, crew retention, tensions between EU and non-EU crews that he increasingly has to resort to, as well as the dissenting voice of fishers’ organisations.
He knows that he is a powerful stakeholder in the industry and that through his membership in various associations, he can influence higher decision-making - for the good of the sector and his company’s interests. However, he also recognises that his activity is dependent on the management measures in place (e.g. quotas, fishing gear regulations), which he must comply with. He’s constantly looking for business partnerships to navigate these and is not ashamed of playing the political game to the full. This has damaged his reputation with smaller fishers, who blame him for dictating the policy and management agendas and not caring enough about the marine environment. Still, he is disconnected from such concerns and thinks his landings are needed to meet the demand of EU consumers.
Between the requirements of his staff, the complaints of small-scale fishers and environmentalists, the constraints imposed by offshore wind energy development and gas exploration on fishing space, competition with other large-scale fishing companies from other countries, quotas, and the pressure put on the industry to transition to clean energy, he often feels cornered with little room for manoeuvre.
Given the high levels of capitalisation involved, he is in the business for the long term and accepts the risks. He has faith that his investments in new state-of-the-art vessels are the way forward.