Owners in other sectors are often surprised to hear that fishing is the hardest brief on this desk. The pay can be competitive, the trips are finite, and the work is skilled. The difficulty is elsewhere.
Three structural problems
The first is that the work is genuinely hard and genuinely uncomfortable, and no recruitment process improves that. The second is that the skills are learned aboard rather than in a classroom, so the pipeline depends on vessels being willing to carry people who are still learning. The third is that a fishing career has historically not converted into anything else, which makes it a difficult thing to advise a twenty-year-old into.
What has changed
- Certification has become more portable between fishing and the wider maritime sector
- Offshore wind has created demand for exactly the sea sense that fishing produces
- Owners are competing for the same deck crew as towage, survey and dredging
That last point is the one fishing owners tend to underestimate. The competition is no longer the boat on the next berth. It is a wind farm operator offering a rotation with a known end date.
The first trip decides it
Almost every fishing placement that fails, fails on the first trip, and almost never because the person could not do the work. It fails because nobody told them what the trip would actually be like — the hours, the motion, the fact that the first three days are the worst three days and then it becomes manageable.
So we say it. Bluntly, before anyone travels, in more detail than the candidate wants at the time. The people who walk away at that conversation were going to walk away in week one anyway, at far greater cost to the vessel, and the ones who stay have already made the decision that matters.
What works
- Trip length and the share arrangement stated in writing before travel
- The first trip framed openly as a trial, for the vessel and for the crew member
- A named person aboard who is responsible for a new hand for the first week
- An honest account of the accommodation and the watch pattern, not a flattering one
And accept that a crew member who leaves for offshore after three seasons is a success story worth being known for, not a loss — because the next three come from the same word of mouth, and word of mouth is the only recruitment channel this sector has ever really had.
The fleets that struggle to crew are the ones nobody leaves well.
