The modern sternpickers are quite a different matter. Sleek, efficient, redolent of power, they easily spool their 1,500-foot nets off large drums set on the afterdeck and have taken most of the back-breaking work out of fishing, although enough remains to still qualify it as very hard work.

Within six months, the total number of passengers forecast to use the line in the entire first year (650,000) had already been passed. For the first 12 months, the figure was in excess of 1.2 million. And overall, it has grown year-on-year, reaching over two million in 2018-19.

[…] he trusts the reader will overlook verbal criticisms, and a few literary erratas.

It may be mature but it's not a sunset industry, and arguably not one sector.