Fishing Vessel

    What is a fishing vessel? A fishing vessel means a ship or boat for catching fish on seas, lakes or rivers. People use many different kinds of vessels in the fishing industry as well as in recreational fishing. Nowadays fishermen use �fishing boat� phrase more often than �fising vessel�. �Fishing vessel� is more ancient notion. Fishing vessel has rich history. The fisrt fishing vessels had similar form to the coracle, and were not intended for use any great distance from the shoreline.

    The speed of technical development which has so affected ordinary ships, whether passenger or cargo liners, or tramps, has not passed by the fishing vessel, whether she be a large Grand Banks schooner or a small crude in-shore vessel operating, say, from relatively isolated coastal spots, or from the shores of one of the under-developed countries which it is part of FAO's task to assist.

     While it is true that increasing mechanization means increasing first cost, yet mechanization must take place if efficient fishing is to be carried out, and this can only be made effective on a rational basis if there is a full and free interchange of information about the direction in which design is proceeding, and potential processes for hull construction. For example, it is possible that, within the very near future, a complete range of standard, quantity-produced, plastic hulls will be available, suitable for some of the smaller classes of fishing vessels. A drifter trawler with this kind of construction is already well past the design stage, and its logical propulsive unit is a standardized high-speed oil engine.

Study of the engineering section will indicate that, in general, fishermen in European countries are in favour of the slow, direct-coupled, direct-reversing oil engine; whilst in the United States there is a ready acceptance of reduction or reduction-reverse gears for ships of even quite respectable size. It is true that in the continental countries of Europe a great deal has been done towards the develop- ment of trawler drive with gear boxes and also with the father-and-son method. But it is evident that even in such a common fishing type as the trawler there are considerable variations of opinion. A bridge could and should be thrown between the different techniques, which are merely opposite ends of an opinion about the same subject.