<p> </p>
The last few months have thrown into sharp relief just how precarious a living fishing can be: The jetstream has stretched a string of brutal weather systems across the north Atlantic, giving the western coasts of Britain, Ireland and France a concentrated battering of several years’ worth of exceptionally heavy weather over a matter of weeks.

There are plenty of fishermen who have hardly been to sea this year and most of us know how uncomfortable things can be when the bank balance starts to dip to danger level and beyond.

This