The term ‘factory ship’ is accurate: fish are caught filleted, skinned and frozen ready for off-loading in port, usually an EU port although they occasionally land in other ports including the UK, straight onto the freezer trucks for onward transmission to market.
Many of these factory ships are modern state of the art vessels but new ones have reduced their size to around 50-80 metres in length. They now trawl in packs, each taking hundreds of tons of fish a day out of our waters after spending a few days fishing an area they move on leaving little catch left for artisanal local fishermen.