The trip began one October night in 2001. In the utter darkness of the high seas, I transferred from a fishery patrol ship to a rusty old trawler more than 200 miles from land, somewhere on Newfoundland’s Grand Banks. All I had by way of a handover was a note from my predecessor warning of a recent traumatic death on board the ship and his suspicions about the vessel fishing illegally.
Ross James grew up on the north Cornish coast and now lives in the Falkland Islands with his wife and children. Obsessed by the sea and the things that live in it, his first book, ‘111 Days – Tales of a Fisheries Observer’, is a firsthand account of life on a trawler.