It has been a stormy year for Sussex fishermen, in more ways than one.

They have been hit by a triple whammy of stricter catch quotas, boat fuel price rises and prolonged spells of windy weather which have stopped them putting to sea.

Experts say cod and hake stocks in the North Sea are on the verge of collapse, but the men who make a living from the Channel argue that the quota system of limiting catches is not working.

First thing on Monday morning, the fish market at Shoreham Harbour is a hive of activity.

Dawn is several hours away and most people are still sound asleep, but the local fishing fleet is busy landing its catch after working flat out during the weekend.

About 40 boats of all shapes and sizes operate out of Shoreham but life is getting even tougher for the diminishing band of people who earn a living from the sea.

One issue galls them more than any other - quotas. For 20 years, Europe has set increasingly strict guidelines on the number of fish of certain species that can be landed in a given year.

Once the limit is reached, fishermen face big fines if they land any more.

The fishermen, however, say theirs is an imprecise art and large quantities of "banned" species are still brought to the surface, only to be thrown back over the side, mostly dead, for the seagulls.

They quotas were supposed to conserve fish but after two decades stocks are still falling.

Matt Leach is a partner at Brighton and Newhaven fish market, off Basin Road South, Portslade.

Five years ago, the firm employed 23 people. Today, there are ten. But demand for fish from the public remains high, with supermarkets in the UK and Europe major buyers.

Mr Leach said some people thought fishermen were greedy but it was in their interest not to overfish because they would lose their jobs if stocks crashed.

He said: "Quotas don't conserve fish and the system needs to be looked at again. Throwing dead fish back into the sea isn't going to conserve them. If the quota system had worked, quotas wouldn't need cutting now."

He said there had been an abundance of plaice in the Channel this year but the quota had still been cut by eight per cent.

The fleet has also been hit by unseasonal weather, with continual gale-force winds sweeping in from the Atlantic.

Many boats have been tied up during the rough weather, and the silted-up water is making it difficult to locate species normally found at this time of year, such as squid and red mullet.

Worthing trawlerman Brian Davey said: "It has been an absolute disaster for us this year. The last four months of the year are normally a really good time for us but this continually windy weather has ruined it.

"We cannot go to sea in winds above 20 to 25mph and the water is just like mud, so the medium-sized trawlers are struggling at the moment.

"The cost of our fuel, red diesel, has also trebled and that's wiped out a lot of profit. It's pretty grim.

"We have always been hit very hard with quotas, and we have to work out what to catch and when to catch it, which is often more of a headache than actually finding the fish."