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Kilkeel Harbour 2003
© 大象传媒 2004
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County Down fishing |
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The introduction of engine power in the early 20th century had a profound effect on local fishing. While it allowed local boats to travel further and remain at sea longer, it also paved the way for new fisheries. The most important of these was Danish seining (Danish seining is used to encircle, herd and finally trap fish) for whiting, an activity which needed the manouvrability that engines gave for success and was quickly adopted by Portavogie fishermen after they saw it being worked by visiting Scottish boats in the 1930s.
The whiting fishery, which was followed at home and also in Scottish whiting grounds was compatible in timing with summer herring fishing and was eagerly taken up by Kilkeel fishermen, some of whom even exchanged their herring drifters for the more adaptable, jack-of-all-trades Nobbies followed by the versatile fishermen of Portavogie. So successful was this new departure that by 1935 whiting had overtaken herring as the single most valuable fish landed in Northern Ireland.
Unlike the cosmopolitan herring industry, whiting fishing was a purely local affair. Its success gave a huge boost to the long-term stability of the Co. Down seafisheries in terms of the number of fishermen employed full-time in their calling and of the number of young men coming into fishing as crew and, even more significantly as fishing-boat owners. This in turn gave a boost to local boat builders and suppliers, who also saw their business expand in the years before the Second World War.
Words: Dr. Vivienne Pollock, Ulster Museum
Your comments
1 Ray Crew from Gulfport Mississippi - 8 February 2004
"Does anyone the annie moore out of annalong skippered by agnew kilkeel rd annalong the greatest day of my life when he took me on as a deckhand when i was about 15 "
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