This link is courtesy of the fly net because it is made the same way and uses the same netting tools as fish nets. Sailing has brought me many cultural experiences and one that made me profoundly sad was a couple years ago in Florida. Pete and I were sailing a Bahamian smack around Little Key near the small fishing town of Cortez. The town of Cortez was in a severe depression because the State had outlawed gill netting as a means of catching fish. There had been two fish packing plants in town and now one was barely holding on selling grouper instead of mullet. The folks in town, generations of fisherfolk, were now left with boats and nets they could not use, not very sustainable.
The first image is a model of a french fishing boat with a representitive net (actually tulle, a form of lace.) The second picture is a detail of a large serigraph by my friend Linda Molto, entitled, "Honey, I sunk the boat." You can see bits of fish net among the floats. the last is a detail of a poster showing a fish shack off Cortez describing a film describing the desolation of a local industry.
Same kind of economic collapse or depression in the lower Chesapeake when we used to sail there - tSmith and Tangier, the islands where the watermen still speak the Gaelic or Welsh-like British-English tongue. Come to think of it - same that happens everywhere we fish-out, or dig out, or over-fertilize... when we don't act in balance with the ecosystem. Or when we stake a place in an ecosystem without a plan on how to remain sustainable after the system changes.... ah. The human hubris, again...
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