Skippers and vessel owners encouraged to complete 2025 survey, which launched on 14 July
A team of fleet researchers will be visiting harbours across the UK from 14 July to 19 September as part of Seafish’s annual Fishing Fleet Survey.
Researchers will conduct interviews with skippers and vessel owners to collect data on business performance and crew demographics, providing an opportunity to give feedback on the state of the industry.
Seafish remains the only organisation that captures a complete set of financial information from the UK fishing fleet. The data collected during the survey is essential to help create Seafish’s ‘Economics of the UK Fishing Fleet’ and ‘Employment in the UK Fishing Fleet’ reports.
The data collected can help policy-makers make informed decisions and offer valuable insights into how the industry is navigating socio-economic challenges such as labour shortages and economic fluctuations.
Interviews during the fleet survey typically last between 10 and 15 minutes, and all data captured is kept strictly confidential.
Every skipper and vessel owner who participates in the survey is eligible for a free benchmark report that compares their business performance to vessels of a similar size.
This report can be beneficial in helping them to highlight areas of improvement for their business, and can be used for grant and loan applications.
Additionally, participating skippers and vessel owners will receive a print-out of the Man-Overboard Toolkit, a short guide that covers safety equipment, safety drills and risk assessments for fishermen. The toolkit was produced earlier this year by the Home and Dry Fishing Safety Campaign.
Juan Carlos Paredes Esclapez, economics project manager at Seafish, said: “Our annual Fishing Fleet Survey continues to be one of our most important projects. It serves as an invaluable resource, allowing us to produce reports that support the UK fishing industry, including our ‘Economics of the UK Fishing Fleet’ report.
“We strongly encourage as many skippers and vessel owners as possible to participate in this year’s survey. The information collected through this survey is essential for ensuring that the UK fishing fleet receives the support it needs.”
The findings from last year’s UK Fishing Fleet Survey will be released later this summer as part of Seafish’s annual ‘Economics of the UK Fishing Fleet’ report.
This presents data on the financial and operational performance of the UK fishing fleet at various levels.
Early insights from the report suggest that, following several challenging years, 2023 and 2024 showed a gradual return to normality for the UK fishing fleet. Key findings include:
• Fishing activity returned to pre-pandemic levels for many fleet segments, but the size of the UK fishing fleet has continued to decrease
• Total fishing income in the fleet reached £1.1bn in 2024, an increase of 7% over 2023
• Landings were up 15% on 2023, driven mainly by increases in some pelagic species.
Skippers and vessel owners who would like to prearrange an appointment can do so by emailing: fleet.survey@seafish.co.uk with their name, email address and/or phone number, and port of operation.
Seafish researchers will then be in touch to arrange an in-person interview at the port that suits the skipper’s needs and availability.
This story was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.50 here.
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