Capturing fish in great quantities for die purpose of trade and profit. Fishing in
contemporary North America is highly regulated by state and federal governments and
generally categorized as commercial or sports. Sports fishing is perceived as primarily
recreational, with the fish becoming both object of play and fellow player, and the
consumption of fish caught often being a subordinate concern to play, meditation, or
socializing. Comparatively, commercial fishing is viewed as work, with cash ultimately
exchanged for the fish. Here fish is a commodity expected to be consumed in a number of
ways by distant consumers, not necessarily the commercial fisher. Where sports fishing may be chiefly an individual pursuit for the purpose of seeking
individual and perhaps social pleasures, commercial fishing can be likened to farming,
with individuals, but more often small crews of workers, performing a public service.
Oppositions of pleasure versus work, quality versus quantity, non-consumption versus
consumption, and individual versus common good characterize official and, to a large
extent, unofficial conceptualizations of modern fisheries. Confounding these distinctions,
however, are the majority of commercial fishers who say they pursue their work mainly
for the pleasure and challenge of it, and sports fishers who persistently catch in quantity
to exchange fish informally with family, friends, and neighbors.
Increasingly forgotten is subsistence fishing—that pursued in order to survive,
whether through the direct consumption of fish or through trade of fish. Now lumped
under sports fishing and restricted in commercial fishing to the trade but not the
consumption of fish, subsistence fishing historically integrates the two fishing arenas,
overcomes many of the definitional oppositions, and implies a total cultural experience,
as well as symbolic and socioeconomic systems, in which fishing plays a part.
A simpler, broader definition of commercial fishing based on fishing intensity and
trade reflects its connection to subsistence fishing and enhances cross-cultural and crossfishery comparisons. For folklorists, thus, commercial fishing is best seen as fishing that
results in catching more fish than a fisher can use and that, therefore, inspires trade. It
covers a wide range of fishing operations, from the sports or tribal fisher who
systematically catches a daily limit and exchanges it fresh or preserved with family,
friends, and neighbors; to the person who fishes with a commercial license part of the
year with or without a crew, perhaps in a small open boat powered by an outboard motor;
to people who fish with crews of one to eight year-round in a mid-size diesel-powered
boat; to people who fish on big processing ships in large crews of as many as twenty,
who sometimes stay at sea for months at a time.
Generally, commercial fishers come from families, neighborhoods, or shoreside
communities where experiences and work on, or adjacent to, bodies of water are
common. By observation, word of mouth, and experience they learn a wide variety of
attitudes, skills, and behaviors related to water and fishing. Practicing keen observational
skills, they learn to identify and name the desirable and undesirable species of available
fish, and learn personality traits and habits of specific kinds of fish and even of specific
individual fish. Commercial fishers acquire knowledge of the fishing grounds, learning to
visualize the underwater terrain, learning the names for commonly known underwater
features, and memorizing landmarks along shore to use in triangulation to position
themselves on the water and their fishing gear under the water. They use the behavior of
birds, weather phenomena, and the color and character of water to predict weather
changes and movements of fish. They also learn to watch and identify the behavior of other fishers in order to protect their own fishing spots; determine another fisher’s fishing
spots, equipment, and related success; and come to the rescue in case of an emergency.
Since their watchful, secretive occupational style often appears deceptive, commercial
fishers reinforce exoteric stereotypes of themselves as untrustworthy and unlawful.
Dedicated fishing people additionally share a wealth of traditional knowledge
regarding the design, construction, maintenance, and manipulation of fishing
equipment—from lures and jigs to nets, from skiffs to ships—all carefully calibrated to
the locale. Familiar with a basic repertoire of knots for building fishing gear and securing
equipment, fishers often associate skill with knots with fisherly competence. Secondarily,
their knots provide an individual signature for the identification of gear. With welldesigned, properly knotted gear, a fisher also learns how to place it most effectively with
respect to fish behavior, water and weather conditions, and the capabilities of the fishing
boat. Critical to the placement of gear in most fishing operations are communication and
coordination with others, learning rhythm, timing, and speed while running boats,
handling gear, and removing fish from the gear.
Once fish are caught, fishers handle and process them using a variety of traditional
techniques related to type of fish, weather conditions, market demand, and transportation
concerns. Back ashore, fishers participate in several marketing networks to sell fish most
effectively, gaining access to these networks and learning negotiation skills from others
and through experience. People who avidly pursue fish generally consume more fish,
more types of fish, and more parts of fish than do those whose experiences with fish are
more limited. Accordingly, they practice a greater repertoire of methods for handling,
preserving, and preparing fish for home consumption, and they regularly include fish on
the menu for social occasions, private and public.
While commercial fishers share a basic repertoire of customs, subsets of other
traditions depend on the size of the fishing operation and the extent to which a fisher
makes a living from fishing. Typically, the smallest operations are broadly and wellintegrated into shoreside communities; practitioners share maritime knowledge that is
widespread within the shoreside community; and because they do not venture far offshore
they exhibit neither highly exclusive occupational traditions nor strongly proscriptive
superstitious behaviors surrounding their work on the water. The larger, more specialized,
and more full-time the fishing operation, the more likely it takes place at some distance
from home, in an environment perceived to be dangerous or different enough from
landbased and near-shore locations that it requires special training, equipment, and
support. Practitioners generally belong to specialized occupational communities within a
greater maritime community separate from the broader shoreside and land-based society.
They pass highly esoteric occupational knowledge among themselves and restrict access
to membership. They often adhere to occupational rituals and proscriptive superstitious
behaviors, and their entire family acts as a support system for the work pursued. Because
of the location of work, specialized routines and schedules, family dynamics and
interfamily dependence—all oriented toward the water—intensive, larger-scale
commercial fishing can be seen as an occupation that fosters a distinctive subculture.
Exoteric stereotypes often flourish in adjacent communities signifying the otherness of
this subculture.
Larger fishing operations break down again into two types according to size. The
smaller, what some anthropologists call “artisanal” fisheries, are small businesses in which people make most of their living from fishing; in which family members,
neighbors, and friends make up the work force and women, children, and elders are
involved in shoreside activities; and in which each fisher practices a diversity of skills,
having both the opportunity and the necessity to learn each angle of the business. These
fishers perpetuate esoteric stereotypes of the strongly independent, individualistic,
selfsufficient, professional fisher, and they actively tell personalexperience narratives that
express attitudes about work, an addiction to fishing, and views of fisheries bureaucrats,
sportsfishers, pleasure boaters, and other commercial fishers.
In the largest ventures, what might be called corporate fisheries, job specialization
increases, the hierarchy of jobs and management structures are stricter and more
complex, crew backgrounds and onshore experiences are more diverse, and the
involvement of women, children, and elders is restricted to social, political, and relief
organizations that support fishing. Since fishers spend so much time with one another,
isolated on board, they tend to create a complete social order in microcosm on the ship, in
effect leading two separate lives, one with their family ashore, and the other with their
“family” at sea.
Because specialized commercial fishing appears to promote a common occupational
pattern regardless of where it occurs, it has been said to transcend ethnicity. Yet within
most maritime communities where commercial fishing is pursued, a variety of fisheries
and scales of operation coexist based on fish sought, gear used, intensity of fishing effort,
and related management structures. Fishery divisions often follow ethnic and family
lines, with fishers jockeying for position across and within groups, establishing a
hierarchy of fishing operations informed by the status of fish sought and ethnic
preferences in equipment, fishing terrain, group dynamics, and fish-handling techniques.
While perhaps subordinate to an overall occupational pattern, ethnic and family
variations are common, as are conflicts among the various ethnic and family groups.
Esoteric stereotypes establish the differentiation in networks and fishing philosophies and
styles. Finally, wherever commercial fishers occur, they complement occupational groups
that serve them and other water-related and land-based groups. These often conflicting
groups form a diversified maritime community, not unlike agrarian counterparts, offering
a universe of traditions to examine from myriads of theoretical perspectives.
As fish disdain national boundaries, commercial fishing challenges the bounds of
definitional constructs and, like fish to fishers, lures folklorists ever farther and deeper.
Janet C.Gilmore
References
Acheson, James M. 1988. The Lobster Gangs of Maine. Hanover, NH: University Press of New
England.
Gilmore, Janet C. 1986. The World of the Oregon Fishboat: A Study in Maritime Folklife. Ann
Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.
Johnson, Paula J., ed. 1988. Workingthe Water: The Commercial Fisheries of Maryland’s Patuxent
River. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Mullen, Patrick B. 1978. “I Heardthe Old Fisherman Say”: Folklore of the Texas Gulf Austin:
University ofTexas Press.