Johnny Breardon, master of the ‘Kendon’, says you’ve “gotta be mad to be in the game” and believes fuel prices could cripple the industry in the future. Boats have 6 hrs steam to the continental shelf before they even look like catching a fish. The future will be in the equation between the relative price of fish and fuel.

Watching the blokes repairing the nets and the shipwrights repair­ing the boats on a sunny day beside the sapphire waters of Twofold Bay, it is hard to imagine Eden without a fishing fleet. Regardless of econom­ics, there are too many families dependant on the industry.