In 2005, the worldwide per capita consumption of fish captured from wild fisheries was 14.4 kilograms (32 lb), with an additional 7.4 kilograms (16 lb) harvested from fish farms. Fishing industries and aquaculture provide direct and indirect employment to over 500 million people in developing countries. When bioblitzes occur, fish are typically caught, identified, and then released.Īccording to the United Nations FAO statistics, the total number of commercial fishers and fish farmers is estimated to be 38 million. Fishing tournaments are held, and caught fish are sometimes kept long-term as preserved or living trophies. In addition to being caught to be eaten for food, fish are caught as recreational pastimes. Nor is it normally applied to hunting aquatic mammals, where terms like whaling and sealing are used instead.įishing has been an important part of human culture since hunter-gatherer times, and is one of the few food production activities that have persisted from prehistory into modern age, surviving both the Neolithic Revolution and successive Industrial Revolutions. The term is not normally applied to harvesting fish raised in controlled cultivations ( fish farming). The term fishing broadly includes catching aquatic animals other than fish, such as crustaceans ( shrimp/ lobsters/ crabs), shellfish, cephalopods ( octopus/ squid) and echinoderms ( starfish/ sea urchins). Fishing techniques include hand-gathering, spearing, netting, angling, shooting and trapping, as well as more destructive and often illegal techniques such as electrocution, blasting and poisoning. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs.

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish.

Fishing in the dark definition