Fishing Equipment

The term modern fishing generally refers to the various applications of the fishing industry used in the modern world that employ contemporary technology. It can encompass recreational fishing, fishing for sport, and the commercial fishing industry. Modern fishing connotes fishing activities that are generally industrialized in some way. Modernized fishing equipment is indicative of modern fishing, and generally the term modern fishing is meant to exclude older, traditional forms of fishing such as hand-line fishing or fishing with cormorant birds.

Modern fishing in the commercial domain has become a hugely industrialized field in order to meet the formidable demand for seafood around the world. Balancing supplying this demand with the increasing fragility of marine ecosystems, already beginning to show exhaustion from extensive commercial fishing, is the toughest challenge facing the fishing community in the 21st century. Modern industrialized fishing started out with fielding large fishing boats using massive nets for the purposes of trawling. This yielded large quantities of fish, but concerns over the damage done by such methods to the marine biosphere has led some commercial fisheries to seek other ways of finding and catching marine fish.

One distinctly modern tool used in modern fishing is a sonar device that uses sound waves to detect bodies underwater, in a somewhat similar fashion to how bats use sound to detect prey. This tool was also used in modern attempts to locate the Loch Ness Monster, with disappointing results. Modern fishing is also distinct from the fishing of the past in that it is now quite segmented and regulated, as opposed to the fishing free-for-all that the seas embodied for fishermen of centuries past. The population of the world and its appetite for seafood has grown enough to endanger fishing populations – and the ecosystems that rely on them – worldwide if fishing is not checked to some degree.

Fishing for pure leisure is another relatively modern aspect of fishing. This is not to say that people had never found leisure in the act of fishing in ages past, but fishing for the pure sake of fishing and the sometime omission of actually eating the fish is certainly a modern development. The creation of entire service industries surrounding fishing for pure sport, including fishing charters, fishing lodges, and fishing television shows is definitely another aspect of modern fishing. Some fishing enthusiasts in the modern era have been attempting to refine the act of fishing from a means of living to a pure sport, or even an art form.