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San diego History center Men fishing live bait for yellow fin tuna

Introduction:

Commercial Fishing is one of the oldest professions. It was brought the the west coast of the United States when large numbers of people began to move west. Many of the early commercial fisherman were of Scandinavian as that is what they had done in their home country. The west coast albacore fleet began fishing in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s off the coast of Southern California, their boats consisted of mainly small wooden vessels fishing the nearshore ground (Dotson, 1980).There are two main methods that that are being used today that have not change much in the last 100 years; trolling’ which consists of dragging lures or jigs on outriggers in the water behind the boat between four and six knots and hauling the fish in one at a time (WFOA, 2013), and live bait, this method uses trolling to locate schools of fish and live bait stored in bait takes on the boat to attract the fish once found, while 2 or more fisherman pull fish using poles to haul fish.

Boats:

In general, The west coast albacore fleet consists of vessels ranging from 30 to 100 feet with most being 45-65 feet caring between 10 and 50 tons of fish per trip (AAFA,2012). The vessels are made of wood, fiberglass, aluminium and steel, with the larger vessel being constructed mostly of steel. The west coast fleet is not considered a large vessel fleet which contributes to it sustainability. A large majority of the albacore fleet is aging with most of the vessels being constructed pre 1980. They operate with small crews; troll vessels consist of a captain and one or two deckhands, whereas bait boats have a captain and upwards of 10 workers pulling fish(Dotson,1980).The boats are broken up into three main categories based on refrigeration:

Ice:

Typically done by smaller vessels with less hold and fuel capacity, these vessels are not equipped with with any sort of refrigeration system, the just use ice to keep the fish cold, never freezing them. These vessels take trips that are between three and seven days before unloading.

Brine:

These vessels are equipped with a system to freeze fish at sea. Brine freezing submerges or spraying freshly caught fish into a sub freezing brine solution to freeze the fish and be stacked in the refrigerated fish hold. These vessels take trips up to 30 days before unloading

Blast:

These vessels can also freeze fish at sea. Blast freezing uses sub freezing air circulating about the fish hold to freeze the fish which are generally hung until frozen then stacked in the hold until off load. These vessels take trips up to 30 before off loading.

Troll or Jig:

Trollers/ jig boats drag squid shaped jigs behind the boat to find fish. Some vessel employ both troll and bait methods, trolling is predominantly used at the beginning of the season before the albacore have begun to school and are more spread out, this is because a troll vessel can travel greater distances while fishing (Scofield, 1956). Trollers are in the range of 30-60 feet using between 8 and 16 lines with each line having one or possibly two jigs at the end (Dotson, 1980). The vessels travel between 4-6 knots while fishing to create the proper movement of the jigs to attract the fish(Scofeild,1956). The disadvantage to using troll gear is that the volume of fish caught is much lower than that of bait fishing while expending more fuel and effort to catch the fish, but smaller vessels may not be able to support the equipment necessary for bait fishing and so resort to jig fishing.

Live Bait:

Live bait boat carry forage fish on board that were caught near shore and stored in large tanks on and/or below decks, they use these fish to attract fish to the boat once they have found fish; bait boats employ the trolling technique to find fish (Scofield, 1956). The live bait fleet consist mainly of larger vessels, ranging from 45-65 feet, this is because they need to be able to carry thousands of gallons of water to store live bait for many day or weeks and maintain stability.

References

Association, A. A. F. (2016, April 13). American Albacore fishing association. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://americanalbacore.com/

Inline Citations:

• (AAFA,2012)

Association, W. F. O. (2013). Western Fishboat owners association. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://pacificalbacore.com/wfoa/boats/

Inline Citations:

• (WFOA, 2013)

Dotson, R. C. (1980, December). NOAA technical memorandum NMF DECEMBER 1980 FISHING METHODS AND EQUIPMENT OF THE U.S. WEST COAST ALBACORE FLEET. Retrieved from https://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/TM/SWFSC/NOAA-TM-NMFS-SWFC-8.PDF

Inline Citations:

• (Dotson, 1980)

Scofield, W. L. (1956, September ). Trolling gear in California. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt4h4nb078&brand=calisphere&doc.view=entire_text

Inline Citations:

• (Scofield, 1956)