The North East coast of England is peppered with small towns and villages that depend upon the North Sea for a livelihood. North Shields at the mouth of the river Tyne is the largest of these, and in the late 1970s had a thriving and long established fishing industry. The fish quay had a large daily market for fresh fish, and the whole area was dominated by allied trades: an ice factory, smokehouses, fish wholesalers, a frozen food factory, and an offal yard. Within ten years the crisis in overfishing and the subsequent EC regulations about fish quotas devastated the industry here and all down the East coast of England.