The sea produces millions of tons of food each year, and employs millions of people worldwide. Fishing vessels have a variety of designs, depending on the type of fish that they will catch and the length of time they will be at sea. These vessels range from large, well-equipped stern trawlers (some are 120 metres long) to small wooden or fibre-glass vessels only a few metres long with no facilities aboard.
Off the South African coast, large stern trawlers are at sea for days at a time – some for several weeks – returning to harbour when their freezer capacity is full. Others go out for a much shorter period to catch snoek, yellowtail and other line fish. Frozen or fresh crayfish (caught in net-traps), hake (a deepsea fish caught by trawling), squid (known as chokka, and served as calamari) and tuna (a line fish) have large export markets.
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Desert Diamond is a stern trawler. A net is lowered through the ramp in the stern and the trawler tows the net at a specified depth through the water, catching fish as it goes. The net is then hauled aboard, the fish are sorted on board the trawler and packed, ready for the market. In some large stern trawlers, the fish is boxed aboard so that when the trawler arrives in port, the boxed fish is ready for the supermarket shelves. Some of these trawlers remain at sea for weeks until the required tonnage of fish has been caught. Photograph : Brian Ingpen
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Stern trawler
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Long-line tuna vessels in Cape Town. These are used to lay long lines from which baited hooks dangle. The lines remain afloat by brightly coloured floats. The long-liner moves along the line; her crewmembers check each hook, remove any fish caught, and rebaiting hooks. The fish are brought ashore and are either processed locally or are exported frozen to countries like Japan, Korea or China. Unfortunately, this is a very indiscriminate method of fishing and often birds, turtles and dolphins are caught in this way. Photograph : Brian Ingpen
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Long-line vessel. Note the orange floats or buoys that keep the long line afloat. The baited hooks are also shown.
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The small refrigerated vessel Taisei Maru No 24. She brings frozen pilchards form the west coast to Cape Town to be loaded aboard the long-line vessels and used as bait. Photograph : Brian Ingpen
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Fishing vessels alongside in Cape Town harbour. Photograph : Brian Ingpen
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The fishing harbour, fish processing factories (canneries, fish-packing and fishmeal plants) and fishing boat repair yards at Saldanha Bay. Photograph : Andrew Ingpen
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In South Africa, pilchards and anchovies are caught by relatively small fishing boats using a Purse-Seine system where the net is lowered over the side, and is towed around a shoal of fish. By winching on ropes at the bottom of the next, the is closed and the full net is hoisted aboard the fishing boat.
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Purse-Seine vessel.
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Much hand-line fishing is done from small vessels to catch snoek, and other inshore fish, while crayfish are caught using crayfish traps, box-like nets into which bait is placed. The traps are laid in shallow water along parts of the Western Cape and Northern Cape coastline. When the boats return in a few hours’ time, the nets are hauled to the surface and any crayfish in the nets are then removed and brought ashore, providing they are the right size. These are regarding as a delicacy in many parts of the world and most of the crayfish caught in local waters are exported either live or the tails are frozen for export. The fishing boat above Sailfish is used for line-fishing. In the background are stern trawlers in Cape Town harbour. Photograph : Brian Ingpen