A fisher or fisherman is someone who captures
fish
Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...
and other animals from a
body of water
A body of water or waterbody (often spelled water body) is any significant accumulation of water on the surface of Earth or another planet. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, but it includes smaller pools of water such a ...
, or gathers
shellfish
Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater envir ...
.
Worldwide, there are about 38 million
commercial
Commercial may refer to:
* a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television)
** Radio advertisement
** Television advertisement
* (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and s ...
and
subsistence
A subsistence economy is an economy directed to basic subsistence (the provision of food, clothing, shelter) rather than to the market. Henceforth, "subsistence" is understood as supporting oneself at a minimum level. Often, the subsistence econo ...
fishers and
fish farmers.
Fishers may be professional or
recreational
Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or pleasur ...
. Fishing has existed as a means of obtaining food since the
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...
period.
[Early humans followed the coast](_blank)
BBC News articles
History
![Egyptian fishery3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Egyptian_fishery3.jpg)
Fishing has existed as a means of obtaining food since the
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...
period. Fishing had become a major means of survival as well as a business venture.
Fishing and the fishers have also influenced
Ancient Egyptian religion;
mullets were worshipped as a sign of the arriving
flood season.
Bastet
Bastet or Bast ( egy, bꜣstjt, cop, Ⲟⲩⲃⲁⲥⲧⲉ, Oubaste , Phoenician: 𐤀𐤁𐤎𐤕, romanized: ’bst, or 𐤁𐤎𐤕, romanized: bst) was a goddess of ancient Egyptian religion, worshipped as early as the Second Dynasty (2 ...
was often manifested in the form of a
catfish
Catfish (or catfishes; order Siluriformes or Nematognathi) are a diverse group of ray-finned fish. Named for their prominent barbels, which resemble a cat's whiskers, catfish range in size and behavior from the three largest species alive ...
. In
ancient Egyptian literature, the process that
Amun used to create the world is associated with the
tilapia
Tilapia ( ) is the common name for nearly a hundred species of cichlid fish from the coelotilapine, coptodonine, heterotilapine, oreochromine, pelmatolapiine, and tilapiine tribes (formerly all were "Tilapiini"), with the economically most ...
's method of
mouth-brooding
Mouthbrooding, also known as oral incubation and buccal incubation, is the care given by some groups of animals to their offspring by holding them in the mouth of the parent for extended periods of time. Although mouthbrooding is performed by a va ...
.
Commerce
![Charles Napier Hemy - The Fisherman 1888](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Charles_Napier_Hemy_-_The_Fisherman_1888.jpg)
According to the
FAO
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...
, there were about 39 million fishers in countries producing more than 200,000 tonnes in 2012, which is nearly 140% the number in 1995. The total
fishery production of 66 million tonnes equated to an average productivity of 3.5 tonnes per person.
Most of this growth took place in
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
n countries, where four-fifths of world fishers and fish farmers dwell.
FAO
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...
''Fishing people''
Retrieved 7 July 2008.
Most fishers are women and men involved in offshore and deep-sea fisheries. Women and men fish in some regions inshore from small boats or collect
shellfish
Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater envir ...
and
seaweed
Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of '' Rhodophyta'' (red), ''Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...
. In many
artisanal fishing
Artisanal fishing (or traditional/subsistence fishing) consists of various small-scale, low-technology, low-capital, fishing practices undertaken by individual fishing households (as opposed to commercial fishing). Many of these households are ...
communities, women or men are responsible for making and repairing
nets, post-harvest
processing
Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming ...
and
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
.
Recreation
Recreational fishing is fishing for pleasure or competition. It can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is fishing for
economic profit
In economics, profit is the difference between the revenue that an economic entity has received from its outputs and the total cost of its inputs. It is equal to total revenue minus total cost, including both explicit and implicit costs.
It ...
, or
subsistence fishing, which is fishing for survival.
The most common form of recreational fishing is done with a
rod,
reel
A reel is an object around which a length of another material (usually long and flexible) is wound for storage (usually hose are wound around a reel). Generally a reel has a cylindrical core (known as a '' spool'') with flanges around the ends ...
,
line,
hooks and any one of a wide range of
baits.
Lures are frequently used in place of bait. Some people make handmade lures, including
plastic lures and
artificial flies
An artificial fly or fly lure is a type of fishing lure, usually used in the sport of fly fishing (although they may also be used in other forms of angling). In general, artificial flies are an imitation of aquatic insects that are natural food of ...
.
The practice of catching or attempting to catch fish with a hook is called
angling
Angling is a fishing technique that uses a fish hook or "angle" (from Old English ''angol'') attached to a fishing line to tether individual fish in the mouth. The fishing line is usually manipulated via a fishing rod, although rodless techni ...
, and fishermen using this technique are sometimes referred to as ''anglers''. When angling, it is sometimes expected or required that the fish be
caught and released.
Big-game fishing
Big-game fishing, also known as offshore sportfishing, offshore gamefishing or blue-water fishing, is a form of recreational fishing targeting large game fish, usually done on a large body of water such as the ocean.
History
Big-game fishing st ...
is fishing from boats to catch large open-water species such as
tuna
A tuna is a saltwater fish that belongs to the tribe Thunnini, a subgrouping of the Scombridae ( mackerel) family. The Thunnini comprise 15 species across five genera, the sizes of which vary greatly, ranging from the bullet tuna (max len ...
,
shark
Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimo ...
s and
marlin
Marlins are fish from the family Istiophoridae, which includes about 10 species. A marlin has an elongated body, a spear-like snout or bill, and a long, rigid dorsal fin which extends forward to form a crest. Its common name is thought to deri ...
.
Noodling and
trout tickling
Trout tickling is the art of rubbing the underbelly of a trout with fingers. If done properly, the trout will go into a trance after a minute or so, and can then easily be retrieved and thrown onto the nearest bit of dry land.
History
Trout tic ...
are also recreational activities.
Communities
For some
communities, fishing provides not only a source of food and work but also
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
and
cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
identity.
International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF)
/ref>
Safety issues
The fishing industry
The fishing industry includes any industry or activity concerned with taking, culturing, processing, preserving, storing, transporting, marketing or selling fish or fish products. It is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization as including ...
is hazardous for fishers. Between 1992 and 1999, US commercial fishing vessel
A fishing vessel is a boat or ship used to catch fish in the sea, or on a lake or river. Many different kinds of vessels are used in commercial, artisanal and recreational fishing.
The total number of fishing vessels in the world in 2016 was ...
s averaged 78 deaths per year. The main contributors to fatalities are:FAO
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...
br>Profile for the USA
* inadequate preparation for emergencies
* poor vessel maintenance and inadequate safety equipment
* lack of awareness of or ignoring stability issues.
Many fishers, while accepting that fishing is dangerous, staunchly defend their independence. Many proposed laws and additional regulation to increase safety have been defeated because fishers oppose them.
Alaska's commercial fishers work in one of the world's harshest environments. Many of the hardships they endure include isolated fishing grounds, high winds, seasonal darkness, very cold water, icing, and short fishing seasons, where very long work days are the norm. Fatigue, physical stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
, and financial pressures face most Alaska fishers through their careers. Out of 948 work-related deaths that took place in Alaska during 1990–2006, one-third (311) occurred to fishermen. This is equivalent to an estimated annual fatality rate
In epidemiology, case fatality rate (CFR) – or sometimes more accurately case-fatality risk – is the proportion of people diagnosed with a certain disease, who end up dying of it. Unlike a disease's mortality rate, the CFR does not take int ...
of 128/100,000 workers/year. This fatality rate is 26 times that of the overall U.S. work-related fatality rate of approximately 5/100,000 workers/year for the same time period.
While the work-related fatality rate for commercial fishers in Alaska is still very high, it does appear to be decreasing: since 1990, there has been a 51 percent decline in the annual fatality rate. The successes in commercial fishing are due in part to the U.S. Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, mul ...
implementing new safety requirements in the early 1990s. These safety requirements contributed to 96 percent of the commercial fishers surviving vessel sinkings/capsizings in 2004, whereas in 1991, only 73 percent survived. While the number of occupational deaths in commercial fishers in Alaska has been reduced, there is a continuing pattern of losing 20 to 40 vessels every year. There are still about 100 fishers who must be rescued each year from cold Alaska waters. Successful rescue is still dependent on the expertly trained personnel of the US Coast Guard Search and Rescue
Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search ...
operations, and such efforts can be hindered by the harshness of seas and the weather. Furthermore, the people involved in Search and Rescue operations are themselves at considerable risk for injury or death during these rescue attempts.[
]
Gallery
File:Fisherman and his catch Seychelles.jpg, A fisherman and his catch, including small sharks, hooked on hand lines miles offshore in the Seychelles
Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (french: link=no, République des Seychelles; Creole: ''La Repiblik Sesel''), is an archipelagic state consisting of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, V ...
File:TraditionalFisherman1Ice.JPG, Traditional Icelandic fisherman
File:Shrimpers on horseback.jpg, Belgium shrimpers on horseback
File:Banks shrimper.jpg, English shrimper with pushnet
A fishing net is a net used for fishing. Nets are devices made from fibers woven in a grid-like structure. Some fishing nets are also called fish traps, for example fyke nets. Fishing nets are usually meshes formed by knotting a relatively th ...
File:Isla Juan Fernandez- Langostas (Lobsters).jpg, Chilean fishermen with lobsters
Lobsters are a family (Nephropidae, synonym Homaridae) of marine crustaceans. They have long bodies with muscular tails and live in crevices or burrows on the sea floor. Three of their five pairs of legs have claws, including the first pair, ...
File:Fishing trawlers(Malpe).JPG, Indian fisherman
File:Long Island fisherman.jpg, Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
fisherman
File:Woman_fishing_in_Don_Det,_Laos.jpg, Woman fishing in Laos
See also
*Fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...
*Recreational fishing
Recreational fishing, also called sport fishing or game fishing, is fishing for leisure, exercise or competition. It can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is professional fishing for profit; or subsistence fishing, which is fishing fo ...
*Aquaculture
Aquaculture (less commonly spelled aquiculture), also known as aquafarming, is the controlled cultivation ("farming") of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, mollusks, algae and other organisms of value such as aquatic plants (e.g. lot ...
*Fish farming
upright=1.3, Salmon farming in the sea (mariculture) at Loch Ainort, Isle of Skye">mariculture.html" ;"title="Salmon farming in the sea (mariculture">Salmon farming in the sea (mariculture) at Loch Ainort, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Fish farming or ...
*Dirty, dangerous and demeaning
"Dirty, dangerous and demeaning" (often "dirty, dangerous and demanding" or "dirty, dangerous and difficult"), also known as the 3Ds, is an American neologism derived from the Asian concept, and refers to certain kinds of labor often performed by ...
* Fishery
* List of American fishers
This is a list of American fishers, denoting fishers who have been involved in various aspects of fishing, commercial fishing and recreational fishing.
American fishers
* Joseph H. Acklen
* Ted Ames – a Maine fisherman, and former hatcher ...
References
Further reading
* Fields, Leslie Leyland (editor) (2002) ''Out On The Deep Blue: Women, Men, and the Oceans They Fish.'' St. Martin's Press.
* Jones, Stephen (2001) ''Working Thin Waters: Conversations with Captain * Lawrence H. Malloy, Jr''. University Press of New England.
External links
* Moore, Charles W (1998
Did fishermen discover the New World?''
For Those in Peril: Dangers at Sea for fishermen on the East Coast of Scotland
historyshelf.org
North East Folklore Archive, Aberdeenshire Council. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
{{Authority control
Fishers
Food services occupations
Marine occupations