A TENBY fisherman is to show the work of unsung night-time workers in a BBC One Wales programme airing next Friday, February 15.

Nightshifters, to be broadcast at 7.30pm, is a four-part series celebrating the army of unsung heroes working all night long.

Voiced by comedian Elis James, Nightshifters, takes viewers into this little known, unseen world to uncover what it’s really like to work from dusk until dawn at workplaces across Wales.

In the first episode, fisherman Gavin Davies and his crew are sailing 70 miles through the night, in search of whelks.

While sea snails aren’t popular with British tastes, this delicacy is in great demand in Japan and Korea, valued for its aphrodisiac powers. The crew are chasing the sunrise and need to haul a ton of the molluscs before dawn.

But tonight they’re fishing in troubled waters and just three hours into their shift, the boat’s engine unexpectedly cuts out. They’re five miles from land, it’s pitch black, and the stormy weather is closing in.

Speaking about the forthcoming programme, Gavin, who fishes out of Saundersfoot, said he was contacted by the BBC “at the back end of last year,” and had put the filming out of his mind until he was again contacted by the BBC to speak about the forthcoming show: “I completely forgot about it, and all of sudden the phones were ringing; I thought ‘what the hell?’.

Gavin, 41, explained how the filming came about: “They came down the harbour asking people what shifts they did, and asked if anybody wanted to do a TV programme.

“I said they’ll have to come with me; they came out in the boat a couple of times.

“It was no different really; we had them doing a bit of work, we just carried on as normal.”

Gavin became a fisherman following the experiences of friends, later “taking the plunge” to buy his own boat, adding: “We’ve just got to work hard and make the best of it.”

He felt there would be a lot of interest in seeing the overnight work of fishermen like him: “Nobody knows what goes on with the boat, it’s big viewing because everybody likes to watch what’s going on.”