page_title: Gillnetting
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Gillnetting / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Fish and Wildlife Service worker on boat checking gill net full of fish
context_page_description: Gillnetting is a fishing method used by commercial fishers, artisanal fishers, and research scientists in oceans, coastal environments, rivers, and lakes. Gill nets are composed of vertical panels of netting that hang from a line with regularly spaced floaters that hold the line on the surface of the water. The floats are sometimes called "corks" and the line with corks is generally referred to as a "cork line." The line along the bottom of the panels is generally weighted. Traditionally this line has been weighted with lead and may be referred to as "lead line." A gillnet is normally set in a straight line. Gillnets can be characterized by mesh size, as well as colour and type of filament from which they are made. Fish may be caught by gill nets in three ways:
  Wedged – held by the mesh around the body.
  Gilled – held by mesh slipping behind the opercula.
  Tangled – held by teeth, spines, maxillaries, or other protrusions without the body penetrating the mesh.
  Most often fish are gilled. A fish swims into a net and passes only part way through the mesh. When it struggles to free itself, the twine slips behind the gill cover and prevents escape.
context_section_description: Gillnets existed in ancient times, as archaeological evidence from the Middle East demonstrates. In North America, Native American fishermen used cedar canoes and natural fibre nets, e.g., made with nettles or the inner bark of cedar. They would attach stones to the bottom of the nets as weights, and pieces of wood to the top, to use as floats. This allowed the net to suspend straight up and down in the water. Each net would be suspended either from shore or between two boats. Native fishers in the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and Alaska still commonly use gillnets in their fisheries for salmon and steelhead.
  Both drift gillnets and setnets have long been used by cultures around the world. There is evidence of fisheries exploitation, including gillnetting, going far back in Japanese history, with many specific details available from the Edo period (1603–1868). Fisheries in the Shetland Islands, which were settled by Norsemen during the Viking Age, share cultural and technological similarities with Norwegian fisheries, including gillnet fisheries for herring. Many of the Norwegian immigrant fishermen who came to fish in the great Columbia River salmon fishery during the second half of the 19th century did so because they had experience in the gillnet fishery for cod in the waters surrounding the Lofoten Islands of northern Norway. Gillnets were used as part of the seasonal round by Swedish fishermen as well. Welsh and English fishermen gillnetted for Atlantic salmon in the rivers of Wales and England in coracles, using hand-made nets, for at least several centuries. These are but a few of the examples of historic gillnet fisheries around the world.
  Gillnetting was an early fishing technology in colonial America, used for example, in fisheries for Atlantic salmon and shad. Immigrant fishermen from northern Europe and the Mediterranean brought a number of different adaptations of the technology from their respective homelands with them to the rapidly expanding salmon fisheries of the Columbia River from the 1860s onward. The boats used by these fisherman were typically around 25 feet (8 m) long and powered by oars. Many of these boats also had small sails and were called "row-sail" boats. At the beginning of the 1900s, steam powered ships would haul these smaller boats to their fishing grounds and retrieve them at the end of each day. However, at that time gas powered boats were beginning to make their appearance, and by the 1930s, the row-sail boat had virtually disappeared, except in Bristol Bay, Alaska, where motors were prohibited in the gillnet fishery by territorial law until 1951.
  In 1931, the first powered drum was created by Laurie Jarelainen. The drum is a circular device that is set to the side of the boat and draws in the nets. The powered drum allowed the nets to be drawn in much faster and along with the faster gas powered boats, fisherman were able to fish in areas they had previously been unable to go into, thereby revolutionizing the fishing industry.
  During World War II, navigation and communication devices, as well as many other forms of maritime equipment (ex. depth-sounding and radar) were improved and made more compact. These devices became much more accessible to the average fisherman, thus making their range and mobility increasingly larger. It also served to make the industry much more competitive, as the fisherman were forced to invest more in boats and equipment to stay current with developing technology.
  The introduction of fine synthetic fibres such as nylon in the construction of fishing gear during the 1960s marked an expansion in the commercial use of gillnets. The new materials were cheaper and easier to handle, lasted longer and required less maintenance than natural fibres. In addition, multifilament nylon, monofilament or multimonofilament fibres become almost invisible in water, so nets made with synthetic twines generally caught greater numbers of fish than natural fibre nets used in comparable situations.
  Nylon is highly resistant to abrasion and degradation, hence the netting has the po
caption: Fish and Wildlife Service worker on boat checking gillnet full of fish.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "FWS employee checks gill nets on boat", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2005:12:28 10:32:23", "Image Artist": "Pedro Ramirez Jr", "Image ExifOffset": "244", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6060", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3976", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2700"}