Why Clive, 82, is hooked on fixing nets

An enormous fishing net stretching the length of a huge shed at Sanford Seafoods surrounds 82-year-old Clive Gaelic.
He is in his element - armed with a long white needle and strong nylon rope, he toils away, repairing any holes by hand.
It is a dying craft, with few young people interested in entering the trade.
But Mr Gaelic has no plans to retire anytime soon.
"I have tried doing other things over the years such as driving trucks for a time, but I always keep coming back to this. It's certainly kept me hooked."
His skills were in demand as nets with holes were the bain of any fisherman's life, he said.
"If your fishing gear has huge holes in it, you won't catch anything. It's as simple as that. So when you repair one, you definitely have to get it right, as downtime means money," he said.
The Tauranga ex-commercial fisherman and net maker/repairer should know, as he has been making and mending nets for most of his working life. He has spent the past 20-odd years as a key member of the net repair crew at Tauranga-based Sanford Seafoods.
Mr Gaelic said sadly today few young people were interested in entering the trade, and those who do often don't stay long.
"Many say it's too boring, but I have never found it so. A net is not just a flat piece of material but it's a complex set of elements made up of different panels, weights of material, sizes of mesh, and right percentages.
"Just like creating a dress, it will only work if you cut it, shape it and sew it right."
For that reason, each repair job presents its own unique challenge, he said.
"If it is too badly ripped a whole new panel may need to be put in place, and then the whole net needs to be reshaped, which is a real skill in itself."
Self-taught, he said he fell into the craft because of a desperate need to keep his own fishing gear in order back in 1941 when he became a fisherman. After he stopping commercial fishing in the early 1970s, he turned his hand to the profession fulltime.
And has been highly sought after ever since.
Mr Gaelic said he's not only done net work in New Zealand and Australia. In 1975 he and two other fishermen delivered three trawlers to the Gulf of Bahrain. They worked under contract to the Bahrain government and introduced net fishing to the area, and ultimately net making and repair.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mr Gaelic helped build massive fish cool stores in Bahrain and Somalia, but on his return to New Zealand in the late 1980s he soon returned to his real passion.
His tools of trade include a needle, ropes, bails of nylons and floats.
Defying his age, Mr Gaelic moves with agility from one section of the net he's repairing to the other, armed with his trusty white needle poised to connect and sew in a new strand of nylon rope to the net.
New fishing nets don't come cheap - a purse seine net one kilometre long and 100m deep can easily cost between $400,000 to $800,000.
When pushed, a modest Mr Gaelic admits his craft does take a special kind of person - someone who possessed an exacting eye for attention to detail, excellent maths skills and was extremely patient.