Commercial Fishing Boats

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Commercial Fishing Boats

• By Piper Cassidy Harris Philpot

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Fishing Techniques

• Trolling
• Gillnetting
• Seining(Purse, Drag, Beach)
• Longlining
• Otter Trawling
• Bottom Trawling
• Mid-water Trawling
• Weirs and Traps

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Trolling

• Trolling is a salmon fishing method in which fish
  are caught on hooks towed on lines behind the
  vessel.
• Troll-caught salmon bring in top prices because
  they are cleaned and iced or frozen immediately
  after being caught and are not scarred by net
  marks.
•  

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Gillnetting

• Gillnetting is one of the oldest forms of
  fishing, practiced around the world for thousands
  of years.
• A gillnet is a long, horizontal mesh sheet with
  floats along the upper edge.
• It is set perpendicular to the path of the fish
  and designed so that incoming fish can get their
  heads but not their bodies through the mesh
• The types of fish caught are salmon,carp,
  catfishes and spiney-rayed fishes ,herring,
  eulachon, smelt

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Seining

• Seining is a method of fishing in which a net is
  used to encircle fish.
• Two types of seines are used in BC the purse
  seine and the drag, or beach, seine.

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Purse Seining

• Purse seining is the predominant seining method
  used today.
• It works on the same principle of encircling a
  school of fish with a long length of net held
  afloat by a corkline or buoys on the top. The
  difference is that the lead line on the bottom is
  pulled up under the water, closing the hole in
  the bottom of the circle so that the fish are
  enclosed in a small purse-like pocket of net.
  Purse seining requires the use of two boats
• no electronic or marine gear is really needed to
  find the fish. By knowing the spots and watching
  for signs, such as seagulls overhead or jumping
  salmon, fishermen can detect where schools of
  salmon are.

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Drag Seining

• Drag seines were used in river mouths where
  salmon gathered before heading upstream to spawn.
  
• First Nations fishermen used two canoes, but
  later, rowboats called skiffs were used. The two
  boats would each carry a piece of the net and
  make a circle with it. Paddling or rowing the
  boats to the same place closed the net circle
  trapping the fish. The nets were then hauled up
  into the boats, catch and all.

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Beach Seining

• Beach seining was possible only at locations
  where salmon gathered in large numbers close to
  shore.
• At such locations nets could be placed or held on
  shore by one fisherman while another, in a boat,
  let out the line and set the net parallel to
  shore, keeping it in place with stone anchors.
  The boat would then return to shore, having
  encircled the school of fish, and hand the line
  off to another fisherman standing on shore. The
  two fishermen on shore would then slowly haul in
  the net, trapping the salmon between the net and
  the beach.

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Longlining

• Longlining is a hook-and-line fishery in which
  long lengths of baited hooks are laid on the
  ocean floor to catch halibut, sablefish,
  rockfish, dogfish,swordfish and other species of
  groundfish.

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Otter Trawling

• Trawling, or dragging, is a commercial fishing
  method in which a trawl vessel (trawler or
  dragger) drags a cone-shaped net with a
  rectangular opening through the water to trap
  fish.
• Trawling is used to take a wide variety of
  species in a number of separate fisheries
  including shrimp, euphausiids, scallops and
  groundfish
• The wings of the net are spread by large wood or
  steel "otter boards," or "doors," which are
  connected to the winch drum on the vessel and
  keep the doors straining outwards from the wings.

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Bottom Trawler

• The bottom trawl has rollers along its bottom
  edge, while floats on the top edge keep the net
  open.
• The groundfish trawl fleet consists of 142
  licence holders (of which about 80 were active in
  1999) during the 1990s they landed an average of
  140,000 tonnes annually with an estimated
  wholesale value of 133 million.
• Most groundfish trawlers must carry
  government-approved observers to gather data
  needed to manage the fishery and comply with
  regulations.

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Mid-water trawling

• Mid-water trawls do not require rollers because
  they do not come into contact with the bottom,
  but they do use weights, floats and doors to keep
  the net open.
• Mid-water trawling accounts for more than 76 of
  the groundfish catch by volume, mostly hake and
  turbot.

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Weirs Traps

• Weirs and traps are devices that were employed
  traditionally by First Nations fishers to catch
  salmon and trout migrating through tidal waters
  or travelling upstream to spawn.
• A weir is a fence-like structure constructed
  from rocks and/or posts and latticework set
  across a stream to block the passage of fish.