Today's Fishing Technologies Pt ll

I think the best description I've heard of long line fishing (and I might have said it before) is that it would be equivalent of putting a string of traps in the woods that was miles and miles long to catch bears. You would catch some bears but you would also catch fox, wolves, rabbits, moose, deer, dogs, and the occasional human. Incredible wasteful and ridiculous right?

Welcome to longline fishing!

Longlining is a technique where hooks are placed on a very long line with bait, spread over miles of ocean. The Wake Project Society describes it as:

The practice of long lining includes laying a line of baited hooks ranging in length from 150m to 100km.1 It is a massively indiscriminate way of fishing, catching not just the targeted fish but all manner of sea creatures

You can find a really great illustration of how it works on their website here.

Despite recent improvements in regulation and sustainability, the technique is wasteful and
have been proven to be extremely harmful to particular species like sharks and Albetross. According to the Human Society over two billion hooks are put in the water with long lines each year.

Major countries that still use long lining include the US, China, Japan, and the European Union, although there are many more smaller nations using the technique.

Here's a video on long line fishing with fun music while fish are caught on hooks and try desperately to get away!:



PS. More scientific proof that fish feel pain.