Fish Traps
Fish traps are only practical in shallow water. They have the advantage of keeping both the targeted catch and the bycatch alive ( unless a shark gets in ! ) You can still see a few fish traps in use in Raritan Bay, where they are built around fixed pilings rather than buoys and anchors as shown here. In years past, shore-based trawling or "haul seining" was also practiced in the bay, where a net would be deployed off the beach by a small boat, and drawn in by donkeys or trucks.
Haul Seining
An estimated 50 tons of spawning Striped Bass is taken in a single net on a Virginia beach in 1972. This type of fishing would be completely illegal today.
The main fishery in Raritan Bay has always been Mossbunker.
A similar type of fixed fish trap is the gill net, which uses a specific-size mesh to trap a certain size of fish. When the fish tries to swim through the net, only its head fits. Then when it tries to back away, it becomes ensnared by its gill covers. This kind of gill netting is fairly specific, as smaller fish pass through the net unharmed, and bigger ones don't get caught in the mesh. A terrible variation of this is drift-netting, described above.
There are three basic types of commercial fishing vessels found in the Mid-Atlantic region: trawlers, seiners/gill-netters, and long-liners. A trawler or "dragger" operates by towing its fishing gear across the bottom. Weighted nets take bottom fishes, while cage-like steel dredges take clams and scallops. A seiner uses a floating net to encircle schools of surface-swimming fishes such as herring and tuna. A long-liner sets out miles of buoyed line with baited hooks to catch sharks, tuna, and swordfish. One could also add lobster boats and charter fishing or "head" boats to this list. And of course, dive boats.
More: Fishing Vessels ...