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- aquaculture
- bycatch
- fishing
- hunting
News •
Gear
An international classification of fishing methods includes 16 categories, depending upon the fishing gear and the manner in which the gear is used: (1) fishing without gear, (2) grappling and wounding gear, (3) stunning, (4) line fishing, (5) trapping, (6) trapping in the air, (7) fishing with bag nets, (8) dredging and trawling, (9) seining, (10) fishing with surrounding nets, (11) driving fish into nets, (12) fishing with lift nets, (13) fishing with falling gear, (14) gillnetting, (15) fishing with entangling nets, and (16) harvesting with machines.
Hand tools
The simplest and oldest form of fishing, collecting by hand, is still done today by both professionals and nonprofessionals along the shore during ebb tide in shallow water and in deeper water by divers with or without diving suits. Even when small tools such as knives or hoes are used, such collecting is classified as without gear. Diving to collect sponges, pearl oysters, or corals belongs under this classification, as does fishing with hunting animals. The Chinese still use trained otters, and the Japanese sometimes employ cormorants.
To extend the reach of the human arm, long-handled tools were invented, such as spears, which can be thrust, thrown, or discharged, and clamps, tongs, and raking devices for shellfish harvesting. A special form is the harpoon, composed of a point and a stick joined together by a rope. Such grappling and wounding gear also includes spears, blowpipes, bows and arrows, and rifles and guns, which are used in fish shooting.
The method called stunning may involve poisoning with toxic plants and special chemicals or mechanical stunning by explosions under water. The most modern practice in this field is to stun the fish by means of an electrical shock.
Lines
In line fishing the fish can be attracted by a natural or artificial bait or lure devised to catch and hold the fish. Generally, the bait is combined with a hook or with a gorge, as is used in France in line fishing for eels. There are handlines, as in pole-and-line fishing for tuna; setlines, such as bottom longlines with hundreds of hooks, used for cod or halibut; drift lines with a single hook and drifting longlines for tuna, shark, and salmon; and troll lines for mackerel and some game fish. Another method of fishing with hooks is done without bait, by raising and lowering arrays of hooks to gig (hook in the body) such large species as cod and sturgeon.
Traps
Genuine mechanical traps, which close by a mechanism released by the prey, are seldom employed for fishing. Most commercial fishing traps are chambers entered easily by the prey but from which escape is prevented by labyrinths or retarding devices, such as gorges or funnels. Fish traps can be simple hiding places, such as bushes or tubes, into which fish or shrimps swim for shelter but cannot escape later when the device is hauled in. The octopus pot used on the Italian coast and by the fishermen of South and East Asia is an example. Other types include small basketlike or cagelike traps made of wood, netting, wire, or plastic pots and fyke nets (long bag-shaped nets kept open by a series of hoops). Large pound nets, composed of net walls that guide fish through a series of baffles into a catching area, are used in the Mediterranean for tuna, off the western Baltic coast for eels, herring, and other species, and off both coasts of the northern Pacific for salmon. A special class are aerial traps for catching flying fish and shrimps. The fish are stirred up, then caught in the air with the help of special gear called veranda nets. South Sea islanders catch flying fish at night by attracting them with torches.
Nets
Bag nets
Bag nets are kept vertically open by a frame and held horizontally stretched by the water current. There are small scoop nets that can be pushed and dragged and big stownets, with and without wings, held on stakes or on anchors with or without a vessel. There is also a special winged type with boards or metal plates (called otter boards) that keep it spread open. Stownets, larger than scoop nets and held in place against a current, are used in many rivers and by the Koreans for sea fishing in the strong current off the southwest coast of their country. In this case the stownet is anchored with a vessel.
Dragged nets
Dragged gear includes dredges, which are used mostly for shellfish and may be operated by hand in shallow waters or towed from large vessels. Another dragged net is the trawl, a large, cone-shaped bag of netting that is dragged along the seabed or towed in mid-water between the seabed and surface. Trawls are the most important fishing gear of the commercial fisheries of northwest Europe and are second only to purse seines in total catch of the world.
Seines
The seine net has very long wings and towing warps (tow lines), with or without bags for the catch. With purse seines, pelagic fish are surrounded not only from the side but also from underneath, preventing them from escaping by diving downward. Purse seines can be operated by a single boat, with or without auxiliary skiff, or by two vessels. Many sardinelike fishes—herring, tuna, mackerel, cod, and salmon—are commercially fished in this manner.