My Scarborough Day - featuring Scarborough fisherman Will Jenkinson

His family originated in Filey and dates back to 1752 when the first Will Jenkinson went to sea.

Here is how his day looks:

1am I’m out of bed and into the car with a coffee, though in winter it’s later.

My boat, the Our Sharon, is a catamaran my dad had built 14 years ago.

She draws very little so we’re not restricted by tides and we go to sea year-round.

In summer, my crew-mate Steve Robson and I set off at 2am for our pots 12 to 22 miles offshore.

4am As day breaks we start collecting lobsters, crabs and occasional fish.

I first went to sea aged eight with my dad and grandad, so I feel at home out there and it can be so peaceful.

We empty and re-bait 400 pots in a morning; up to 600 in summer.

We put back undersized or soft shellfish – they shed their shell each year to grow.

Sometimes we’ll lose pots when scallopers or Dutch trawlers accidentally tow them.

We carry a cast iron lump with prongs to ‘graze’ lost pots from the sea bed.

11am As we return, we sort everything into plastic stacker boxes.

An exceptional haul is 400-500kg of lobster plus eight to 10 boxes of crab: summer is best, when the sea is warmest.

Autumn is OK and pre-Christmas prices can be good, but January to April less so, and we repair floats and make new pots.

We used to go lining in winter for cod but the seals have stopped that – they’re no longer culled and hundreds of thousands of them feed on cod.

1pm If we’ve had the tide behind us both ways we could be home.

We unload to Edwin Jenkinson’s crane and forklift.

Everything is weighed, checked and tallied, and I log what I’ve landed and where I caught it.

Much of our lobster ends up in France and Jenkinsons are opening up the Japanese market.

1.30pm We lower bait (salmon heads or mackerel), spare pots and anchors into the boat for the next day, then I go to school to pick up our eight-year-old,

Charlie.

My wife Lauren (who works in HR), Issie (12), Charlie and I live at Crossgates, which I’ve just got used to as I lived in the Bottom End until aged 30.

Back home, I’ll raid the fridge – I’m starving as I only take water or cordial and a Nespresso flask to sea.

4-7pm I try to go in our gym but I’m also involved in the fishing bodies NFFO and IFCA.

I run Charlie’s football team and I play for West Pier.

I’m the family cook – I love making Indian food and roasts; we also get lobster, scallops, herring and kippers and I home-make ling or cod fish fingers using a fryer that was my great-grandad’s.

We like to eat together but often Issie’s rehearsing at the YMCA or at rugby, and Charlie’s at football.

Life is hectic!

9pm On summer evenings I stay up with my family so may only manage four hours’ sleep; in winter it’s more.

Not a lot keeps me awake but my job can be stressful – I worry about my pots being towed, or if new regulations are coming, like mandatory medicals, which a lot of fishermen are failing.

Photo: Scarborough fisherman Will Jenkinson