Seine fishing

Seine fishing (or seine-haul fishing; seɪn ) is a method of fishing that employs a surrounding net, called a seine, that hangs vertically in the water with its bottom edge held down by weights and its top edge buoyed by floats. Seine nets can be deployed from the shore as a beach seine, or from a boat. Boats deploying seine nets are known as seiners. Two main types of seine net are deployed from seiners: purse seines and Danish seines. A seine differs from a gillnet, in that a seine encloses fish, where a gillnet directly snares fish. The word seine has its origins in the Old English segne, which entered the language via Latin sagena, from the original Greek σαγήνη sagēnē (a drag-net). Seines have been used widely in the past, including by Stone Age societies. For example, the Māori used large canoes to deploy seine nets which could be over a kilometer long. The nets were woven from green flax, with stone weights and light wood or gourd floats, and could require hundreds of men to haul. Native Americans on the Columbia River wove seine nets from spruce root fibers or wild grass, again using stones as weights. For floats they used sticks made of cedar which moved in a way which frightened the fish and helped keep them together. Seine nets are also well documented in ancient cultures in the Mediterranean region. They appear in Egyptian tomb paintings from 3000 BC. In ancient Roman literature, the poet Ovid makes many references to seine nets, including the use of cork floats and lead weights. The beach seine is employed by anchoring a section of netting on the shoreline, then dragging the net into the water and surrounding the fish, before pulling it ashore. Several countries have prohibited the use of the seines. Kenya outlawed the use of beach seines in 2001. A common type of seine is a purse seine, named such because along the bottom are a number of rings. A line (referred to as a purse-line) passes through all the rings, and when pulled, draws the rings close to one another, preventing the fish from "sounding", or swimming down to escape the net.