FISHERMAN Tom Russell is busy hauling nets of crabs from his small boat in Poole Quay.

Yesterday his crew were at sea for 14 hours but today, they were forced to abandon the catch in the Channel due to severe rough weather.

“Every fisherman would tell you fishing is an obsession but it is a tough life being a fisherman, it really is,” he says.

“We’re up against nature all the time - the weather, the tide. That alone would be enough to deal with.”

However skippers like Tom make no attempt to hide that the biggest strain on their 90 hour weeks is the regulations that the European Union enforces – and for this close-knit Dorset community, the upcoming referendum is a godsend.

The local fishermen stand united in battling for Brexit in a bid to release their industry from the constraints and complexities of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).

“I haven’t spoken to anyone who wants to stay in. Many people have been waiting for it," said Tom.

“The fishing industry has been decimated. I want out for the industry to hopefully give us a good chance again.”

Tom, who is the chairman of Poole and District Fishermen’s Association, whose families have fished for generations, recalls it was once a lucrative business.

“I’ve been in it all my life and it was brilliant. Now it’s a job to even get a good crew.

“In 1938 there were about 70,000 fishermen. Now there are just over 12,000 fisherman left in the country."

The 63-year-old grandad-of-11, who named the 8ft boat he built after his youngest daughter Jessica Lynn, blames the EU for its decline.

The CFP, which was adopted in 1983 restricted member nations' exclusive fishing rights to a belt of water 12-nautical miles from their own coastlines, leaving the rest of the waters open to all other member-states.

It also enforced national quotas – limits on the amount of fish every nation could take – to sustain stocks in a North Sea that had been severely depleted by years of overfishing.

In 2019, a discard ban will be in place where fishermen will no longer be able to dispose of any fish at sea and all fish, even those caught accidentally, will have to be landed and considered part of the quota they are allotted.

Many skippers believe these strict legislations, licences and imposed quotas will make it impossible to survive.

“Every time something comes along that fishermen are being a success at, they seem to knock us back with yet another rule.

“The politicians don’t stick up for us. They seem to send us down the river at any opportunity. We’ve got the biggest grounds of any country in the EU yet we’re only allowed to fish less than 20 per cent of it.

“There are no quotas on crabs at the moment but in the spring we catch fish – Dover sole, cod, skate, rays. Every year the quota has gone down, down, down thanks to the EU. Yet there is just as much if not more fish in the sea. It doesn’t make sense.

“Normally this year we’d also be netting for ray. The sea is full of them but the quota is so small, like three fish a week yet we could catch 50 or 60 a day.

“It is ruining us."

Tom added: “We don’t have control of our own waters but nobody wants to conserve them more than the fishermen. We should be allowed to fish in our waters. It's our life and it's in our blood.

“We import far more than we export yet we could catch that ourselves.

“Our sea is full of cod and the south west of England the sea is full of haddock but we have such a pitiful quota, the trawlers are avoiding it. The French on the other hand have a massive quota,” said Tom, who lives in Colehill.

"The French seem to think highly of their fishermen as a country and look after them.

"I'd like to see younger generations encouraged into the industry. At the moment the boat licences are so expensive, they don't have a chance and without a future, it will die."

Another skipper Mike Bailey is also poised to vote leave. He believes without Europe and its constraints, the UK could rebuild its fishing fleet – and its prosperity.

The 48-year-old, from Poole, who today is dredging the harbour for clams and cockles, believes the UK should regain its waters and the pride it had in the fishing industry.

“For me we’ve definitely got to leave. For a lot of the fishermen it’s the quotas but for me it’s all the regulations and the new laws.

“We are so regulated it is untrue. It never used to be like this. My dad was a fisherman, my dad’s dad, my three brothers, it’s all we’ve known but now it’s all about the strict rules. There’s where we can fish, where we can’t fish, what we can do, what sizes, it’s just so over the top.

“We are an island and we are not made for Europe.”

* For an alternative perspective on the CFP and the EU, try ukandeu.ac.uk/what-would-brexit-really-mean-for-the-uks-fishing-industry and theconversation.com/fact-check-is-80-of-uk-fish-given-away-to-the-rest-of-europe-39966