Thieves put young fisherman's livelihood at risk

News Archive > General > Thieves put young fisherman's livelihood at risk

Jonathan Butcher03/03/2010

A young Newquay man taking his first steps towards a career in fishing has had his equipment stolen and sabotaged, in what may be the latest incident in a long-running campaign.
Jake Gilbert, 17, was recently bought a boat by his fisherman father, and had used it less than ten times before £1,200 worth of his pots were stolen from the Active Sellers at the harbour and his nets were cut out at sea.
Jake said: "I used to fish with my dad a lot, but I decided I wanted to start doing it myself, properly.
"I don't know if someone has something against me, or whether someone has just stolen the pots.  But the 30 that were taken were old and there are a lot of new ones down on the quay, so why not take those?"
Jake's father Martin is infuriated and claims that over the last five years he has had huge amounts of equipment stolen, and blames this on what he claims is insufficient security at the harbour.
Martin said: "I am totally jacked off with it all.  The security here is rubbish.
"The police have said that they only look at the cameras here if anything is going on, such as when a light comes on down here late at night.  But over on the quay, the CCTV sees just one position, and it's about time something was done about that."
He claimed that, apart from in 2009, his property has been stolen each year for the past five years, which has resulted in him losing more than £6,000 of equipment.
He continued: "I think that if someone has a decent sized transit van, it would only take about five minutes to get all 30 loaded on.
"I am going to bring up the issue at the next Harbour Committee Meeting, and get hold of councillors, because they are always talking about the thousands of pounds of reserves they have.  This harbour needs better CCTV."
Police are currently viewing the security footage from the night, and are appealing for witnesses or anyone with information to come forward.
Witnesses should quote crime reference number GN/10/302 when contacting the police on 08452 777 444.