Since Britain joined the European Economic Community in the mid-1970s, the fishing industry along our coasts has been under pressure from overfishing. In this book, Mike Smylie takes us on a tour from the Tweed to the Northern Isles, taking us to harbours that you could once walk over on the hundreds of fishing boats to coastal inlets where the herring once shoaled. We also see the fishermen and women on shore and at sea, their boats, the harbours and the methods used to catch the fish.

Many of the smaller fishing villages on Scotland's east coast are now tourist hotspots, with the industry concentrated in ports such as Eyemouth, Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Lerwick and Mike Smylie shows the industry's decline and its resurgence in those centres today. From the quaint fishing villages of Fife to the abandoned herring stations of Orkney and Shetland, the industry is illustrated by the contrast between these old and new images.