It's got a lot to answer for, the humble prawn. Forget cockles, disregard whelks; when it comes to seafood, the ubiquitous prawn is the one for us.

Once, we Brits bought them by the pint. A kind of do-it-yourself meal in a glass, there was no better way to get your fingers wonderfully sticky and smelly.

Then, someone came up with a way of peeling them for us, opening up, at a stroke, a whole new world of culinary possibilities. For years thereafter, the prawn – primarily in cocktail format but sometimes accompanied by an Avocado pear – became the obligatory precursor to steak and chips, (medium cooked, of course). 
 Now, in these more modern times, surf 'n turf is the thing. And that's not to mention the plethora of prawn-based Chinese and Indian dishes so beloved within the British Isles. Our friend the prawn, it seems, has finally taken centre stage by making it on to the main course – will there be no stopping its onward march?
 
"Well, I certainly hope not," says John Elliott, owner of J R Elliott Transport Limited and one of the West Coast of Scotland's dwindling band of prawn fishermen. "We're not facing the kind of predicament the white-fish fishermen are up against, but there's no doubting we're an industry that's under pressure. Actually, that's one of the reasons I got into transport in the first place."

In fact, John has a long history of transport intermingled with seafaring.  And in a career that has spanned the globe, he's certainly been around a bit.  "I'm originally from Cardiff, but we then moved to Somerset where I began working with my father, buying and selling produce," he says. "We used to run a couple of trucks, which was my introduction to transport, but eventually I decided to leave to go sailing as a yacht skipper. That took me to South Africa from where I went to Australia, which is when I first began prawn fishing.  "I spent a couple of years in Freemantle, netting prawns up and down the West Coast. That was great until I got shipwrecked in Shark's Bay – we were rammed by another boat in the night. Fortunately, they weren't too badly damaged – we were – and we managed to clamber aboard and were taken ashore.

"After that, I decided to come home. I bought a steel hull in Cornwall, fitted it out and began fishing out of Newlyn.  But then we had a couple of bad winters – remember the Mousehole lifeboat disaster? – and I made a decision to go to Scotland the following summer to fish for Dublin Bay prawns.  And that, basically, was that. I just never went back!"