Fishing

• 1. Introduction

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  Fishing has outlasted nearly every other way humans feed themselves. It is one of the few food production activities that survived both the Neolithic Revolution and successive Industrial Revolutions, carrying forward from prehistory into the modern age. Isotopic analysis of Tianyuan man, a 40,000-year-old modern human from eastern Asia, showed he regularly ate freshwater fish. So the practice of trying to catch fish reaches back at least to the Upper Paleolithic. Today it is something else entirely. The United Nations FAO estimates 39.0 million commercial fishers and fish farmers, while fishing industries and aquaculture provide direct and indirect employment to over 500 million people in developing countries. Somewhere between that ancient riverbank and a modern factory ship, fishing became a sport, an industry, a science, and a symbol woven into religion and everyday speech. How did a survival skill split into so many lives? Who built the boats that made deep-sea fishing possible? And what happens when a billion people depend on a resource that is running thin?

• 2. Ancient Origins

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  Neanderthals were fishing by about 200,000 BC, long before the modern human era. Archaeology features such as shell middens, discarded fish bones, and cave paintings reveal that seafood mattered greatly for survival and was eaten in significant quantities. Fishing in Africa appears very early in human history. Early people may have developed basketry for fish traps, using spinning and early forms of knitting to make nets capable of catching more fish. Most of these people lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and were, of necessity, constantly on the move. Yet where early examples of permanent settlements exist, such as those at Lepenski Vir, they are almost always tied to fishing as a major source of food. That link between staying put and reliable water hints at the role fishing played in the earliest stable communities.

• 3. The Brixham Trawler

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  The British dogger was a very early type of sailing trawler from the 17th century, but the modern fishing trawler took shape in the 19th century at the English fishing port of Brixham. The fishers there needed to reach further than ever, because the overfished waters of South Devon were running down. The Brixham trawler that evolved had a sleek build and a tall gaff rig, giving it speed for long trips to ocean fishing grounds. It was also robust enough to tow large trawls in deep water. The great trawling fleet that grew there earned the village the title 'Mother of Deep-Sea Fisheries'. This design made large-scale ocean trawling possible for the first time. The result was a migration of fishers from southern England to villages further north, such as Scarborough, Hull, Grimsby, Harwich and Yarmouth, all gateways to the Atlantic. The small village of Grimsby grew to become the largest fishing port in the world by the mid 19th century, the next chapter in that northward shift.

• 4. Steam And Steel

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  Grimsby's rise was paved by Acts and stone. An Act of Parliament obtained in 1796 authorised new quays and the dredging of the Haven to make it deeper. Only in 1846, with tremendous expansion in the industry, was the Grimsby Dock Company formed. The foundation stone for the Royal Dock was laid by Albert the Prince consort in 1849, and the 25 acre dock was formally opened by Queen Victoria in 1854 as the first modern fishing port. By the end of the 19th century there were over 3,000 fishing trawlers in commission in Britain, with almost 1,000 at Grimsby, and twelve trawlers went on to form the nucleus of the German fishing fleet. The earliest steam-powered fishing boats appeared in the 1870s, usually 80 to 90 ft long with a beam of around 20 ft, weighing 40 to 50 tons and travelling at 9 to 11 kn. David Allen made the earliest purpose-built fishing vessels in Leith, Scotland in March 1875, and in 1877 he built the first screw propelled steam trawler in the world. The first purpose-built stern trawler, Fairtry, was built in 1953 at Aberdeen, Scotland, and could lift hauls of up to 60 tons, inaugurating the era of the 'super trawler'.

• 5. The Gentle Art

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  The earliest English essay on recreational fishing was published in 1496 by Dame Juliana Berners, prioress of the Benedictine Sopwell Nunnery. Her essay, Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, covered fishing waters, the construction of rods and lines, and the use of natural baits and artificial flies. Recreational fishing took a great leap forward after the English Civil War, leaving its mark on the many books and treatises written then. Leonard Mascall wrote A booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line in 1589. The Compleat Angler was written by Izaak Walton in 1653 and described the fishing in the Derbyshire Wye, a celebration of the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse, with a second part later added by Walton's friend Charles Cotton. Charles Kirby designed an improved fishing hook in 1655 that remains relatively unchanged, and invented the Kirby bend, a distinctive hook with an offset point still common today. These early texts turned a survival skill into a written craft that the following century would refine into an industry.

• 6. Rods Reels And Riches

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  After the Great Fire of London in 1666, artisans moved to Redditch, which became a centre of production for fishing-related products from the 1730s. Onesimus Ustonson established his shop in 1761, remained a market leader for the next century, received a royal warrant from three successive monarchs starting with King George IV, and invented the multiplying winch. Jointed rods became common from the middle of the 18th century, and bamboo came to be used for the top section, giving greater strength and flexibility. Modern reel design had begun in England during the latter part of the 18th century, with the wide-drum 'Nottingham reel' that spooled out freely. Geared multiplying reels never caught on in Britain but found success in the United States, where George Snyder of Kentucky modified similar models into his bait-casting reel, the first American-made design in 1810. The American Charles F. Orvis designed a novel reel and fly in 1874, called by reel historian Jim Brown the 'benchmark of American reel design'. Albert Illingworth, 1st Baron Illingworth, a textiles magnate, patented the modern fixed-spool spinning reel in 1905, allowing much lighter lures to be cast. Inexpensive fiberglass rods, synthetic fly lines, and monofilament leaders in the early 1950s revived the popularity of fly fishing.

• 7. Industry And Numbers

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  Total world capture fisheries production in 2000 was 86 million tons, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The top producing countries, in order, were the People's Republic of China, Peru, Japan, the United States, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, India, Thailand, Norway, and Iceland, together accounting for more than half of world production, with China alone supplying a third. Over 90% of that production was marine and less than 10% inland. A small number of species support most of the world's fisheries, including herring, cod, sardine, anchovy and tuna, with herring and sardines together providing over 22 million metric tons in 1999. The FAO counted four million commercial fishing vessels in 2004, about 1.3 million of them decked, and 40,000 over 100 tons. Two-thirds, some 1.8 million, were undecked traditional craft powered only by sail and oars. In 2022-24% of fishers and fish farmers and 62% of workers in the post-harvest sector were women. Fish and other seafoods provide the world's prime source of high-quality protein, 14 to 16 percent of the animal protein consumed worldwide, with over one billion people relying on fish as their primary source of animal protein.

• 8. Strain And Symbol

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  Stocks fished within biologically sustainable levels fell from 90% in 1974 to 62.3% in 2021. The list of pressures is long: overfishing, by-catch, marine pollution, ghost fishing, climate change, fisheries-induced evolution and fish farming. There is a growing gap between how many fish are available and humanity's desire to catch them, a problem that worsens as world population grows. Discarded gear adds to the strain, with annual global losses estimated at 5.7% of all fishing nets, 8.6% of all traps and 29% of all lines, which can entangle and be ingested by marine organisms. Laboratory experiments have shown that fish react to painful stimuli, such as injections of bee venom, in a way similar to mammals, and the practical consensus among animal-welfare bodies is that fish very likely feel pain. The activity has also left marks on language and faith. A 'fishing expedition' describes someone implying they know more than they do, and the scam of phishing duplicates a website to capture sensitive information. Because the Apostle Peter was a fisherman, the Catholic Church adopted the fisherman's ring into the Pope's traditional vestments, one small thread linking a 40,000-year-old meal to a ceremony worn today.