Traditional fishing village - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A fishing village is a village

Village

A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

, usually located near a fishing ground, with an economy based on catching fish and harvesting seafood. The continents and islands around the world have coastlines totalling around 356,000 kilometres (221,000 mi). From Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

times, these coastlines, as well as the shorelines of inland lakes and the banks of rivers, have been punctuated with fishing villages. Most surviving fishing villages are traditional.

Characteristics

Coastal fishing villages are often somewhat isolated, and sited around a small natural harbour which provides safe haven for a village fleet of fishing boats

Fishing vessel

A fishing vessel is a boat or ship used to catch fish in the sea, or on a lake or river. Many different kinds of vessels are used in commercial, artisanal and recreational fishing....

. The village needs to provide a safe way of landing fish and securing boats when they are not in use. Fishing villages may operate from a beach, particularly around lakes. For example, around parts of Lake Malawi

Lake Malawi

Lake Malawi , is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the Great Rift Valley system of East Africa. This lake, the third largest in Africa and the eighth largest lake in the world, is located between Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania...

, each fishing village has its own beach. If a fisherman from outside the village lands fish on the beach, he gives some of the fish to the village headman. Village fishing boats are usually characteristic of the stretch of coast along which they operate. Traditional fishing boats

Traditional fishing boats

Traditionally, many different kinds of boats have been used as fishing boats to catch fish in the sea, or on a lake or river. Even today, many traditional fishing boats are still in use. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization , at the end of 2004, the world fishing fleet...

evolve over time to meet the local conditions, such as the materials available locally for boat building, the type of sea conditions the boats will encounter, and the demands of the local fisheries.

Some villages move out onto the water itself, such as the floating fishing villages of Ha Long Bay in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, the stilt houses of Tai O

Tai O

Tai O is a fishing town, partly located on an island of the same name, on the western side of Lantau Island in Hong Kong.-Geography:On the main part of Lantau Island, a river splits to the north and west and at this fork lies the island referred to as Tai O. Two pedestrian bridges cross the river...

built over tidal flats near Hong Kong, and the kelong

Kelong

A Kelong is a Malay word to describe a form of offshore platform built predominantly with wood, and can be found in waters off Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, while only a handful remains around Singapore due to rapid urbanisation.Kelongs are built by fishermen primarily for fishing...

found in waters off Malaysia, the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

and Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

. Other fishing villages are built on floating island

Floating island

A floating island is a mass of floating aquatic plants, mud, and peat ranging in thickness from a few inches to several feet. Floating islands are a common natural phenomenon that are found in many parts of the world. They exist less commonly as a man-made phenomenon...

s, such as the Phumdi

Phumdi

Phumdis are a series of floating islands, exclusive to the Loktak Lake in Manipur state, in northeastern India. They cover a substantial part of the lake area and are heterogeneous masses of vegetation, soil and organic matter, in different stages of decay. The largest single mass of phumdi is in...

on Loktak Lake

Loktak Lake

Loktak Lake, the largest freshwater lake in India, also called the only Floating lake in the world due to the floating phumdis on it, is located near Moirang in Manipur state, India. The etymology of Loktak is Lok = "stream" and tak = "the end"...

in India, and the Uros

Uros

The Uros are a pre-Incan people who live on forty-two self-fashioned floating islands in Lake Titicaca Puno, Peru and Bolivia. They form three main groups: Uru-Chipayas, Uru-Muratos and the Uru-Iruitos...

on Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca is a lake located on the border of Peru and Bolivia. It sits 3,811 m above sea level, making it the highest commercially navigable lake in the world...

which borders Peru and Bolivia.

Apart from catching fish, fishing villages often support enterprises typically found in other types of village, such as village crafts, transport, schools and health clinics, housing and community water supplies. In addition, there are enterprises that are natural to fishing villages, such as fish processing

Fish processing

The term fish processing refers to the processes associated with fish and fish products between the time fish are caught or harvested, and the time the final product is delivered to the customer...

and marketing

Fish market

A fish market is a marketplace used for marketing fish products. It can be dedicated to wholesale trade between fishermen and fish merchants, or to the sale of seafood to individual consumers, or to both...

, and the building and maintenance of boats. Until the 19th century, some villagers supplemented their incomes with wrecking

Wrecking (shipwreck)

Wrecking is the practice of taking valuables from a shipwreck which has foundered near or close to shore. Often an unregulated activity of opportunity in coastal communities, wrecking has been subjected to increasing regulation and evolved into what is now known as marine salvage...

(taking valuables from nearby shipwreck

Shipwreck

A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....

s) and smuggling

Smuggling

Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...

.
In less developed countries, some traditional fishing villages persist in ways that have changed little from earlier times. In more developed countries, traditional fishing villages are changing due to socioeconomic

Socioeconomics

Socioeconomics or socio-economics or social economics is an umbrella term with different usages. 'Social economics' may refer broadly to the "use of economics in the study of society." More narrowly, contemporary practice considers behavioral interactions of individuals and groups through social...

factors like industrial fishing and urbanization

Urbanization

Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....

. Over time, some fishing villages outgrow their original function as artisanal fishing

Artisan fishing

Artisan fishing is a term used to describe small scale low-technology commercial or subsistence fishing practices. The term particularly applies to coastal or island ethnic groups using traditional techniques such as rod and tackle, arrows and harpoons, throw nets and drag nets, and traditional...

villages. Seven hundred years ago, Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

, beside the Yangtze River

Yangtze River

The Yangtze, Yangzi or Cháng Jiāng is the longest river in Asia, and the third-longest in the world. It flows for from the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai eastward across southwest, central and eastern China before emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai. It is also one of the...

delta, was a small fishing village. In recent times, fishing villages have been increasingly targeted for tourist and leisure enterprises. Recreational fishing

Recreational fishing

Recreational fishing, also called sport fishing, is fishing for pleasure or competition. It can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is fishing for profit, or subsistence fishing, which is fishing for survival....

and leisure boat pursuits can be big business these days, and traditional fishing villages are often well positioned to take advantage of this. For example, Destin

Destin, Florida

Destin is a city located in Okaloosa County, Florida. It is a principal city of the Fort Walton Beach-Crestview-Destin, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.Located on Florida's Emerald Coast, Destin is known for its white beaches and emerald green waters...

on the coast of Florida, has evolved from an artisanal fishing village into a seaside resort

Seaside resort

A seaside resort is a resort, or resort town, located on the coast. Where a beach is the primary focus for tourists, it may be called a beach resort.- Overview :...

dedicated to tourism with a large fishing fleet of recreational charter boats. The tourist appeal of fishing villages has become so big that the Korean government is purpose-building 48 fishing villages for their tourist drawing power. In 2004 China reported it had 8,048 fishing villages.

Early villages

Skara Brae

Skara Brae is a large stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, Orkney, Scotland. It consists of ten clustered houses, and was occupied from roughly 3180 BCE–2500 BCE...

on the west coast of the Orkney mainland, off Scotland, was a small Neolithic

Neolithic

agricultural and fishing village with ten stone houses. It was occupied from about 3100 to 2500 BC, and is Europe's most complete Neolithic village. The ancient Lycia

Lycia

Lycia Lycian: Trm̃mis; ) was a region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey. It was a federation of ancient cities in the region and later a province of the Roman Empire...

n sunken village of Kaleköy in Turkey, dates from 400 BCE. Clovelly

Clovelly

Clovelly is a village in the Torridge district of Devon, England. It is a major tourist attraction, famous for its history and beauty, its extremely steep car-free cobbled main street, donkeys, and its location looking out over the Bristol Channel. Thick woods shelter it and render the climate so...

, a fishing hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

north Devon coast of England, an early Saxon settlement, is listed in the Domesday Book

Domesday Book

Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

. Kaunolu Village

Kaunolu Village Site

Kaunolū Village Site is located on the south coast of the island of Lānaʻi. This former fishing village, abandoned in the 1880s, is the largest surviving ruins of a prehistoric Hawaiian village. The archaeological site is very well-preserved and covers almost every phase of Hawaiian culture. It was...

, a Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

an fishing village, is thought to date from about 1500 CE.

Recent archaeological excavations of earlier fishing settlements are occurring at some pace. A fishing village recently excavated in Khanh Hoa

Khánh Hòa

Khánh Hòa may refer to a number of places in Vietnam:*Khanh Hoa Province*Khánh Hòa, An Giang - a commune of An Giang Province...

, Vietnam, is thought be about 3,500 years old. Excavations on the biblical fishing village Bethsaida

Bethsaida

Bethsaida is a place mentioned in the New Testament.- Bethsaida Julias :...

, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee

Sea of Galilee

The Sea of Galilee, also Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias , is the largest freshwater lake in Israel, and it is approximately in circumference, about long, and wide. The lake has a total area of , and a maximum depth of approximately 43 m...

and birthplace of the apostles Peter, Philip and Andrew, have shown that Bethsaida was established in the tenth century BCE. A Tonga

Tonga

Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga , is a state and an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprising 176 islands scattered over of ocean in the South Pacific...

n fishing village, recently excavated, appears to have been founded 2900 years ago. This makes it the oldest known settlement in Polynesia

Polynesia

Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

. Another recent excavation has been made of Walraversijde

Walraversijde

Walraversijde is an abandoned medieval fishing village on the Belgian coast, near Ostend. It was rediscovered in 1992 in a dune area, near a medieval dyke. Archeological research showed that it had been occupied, in two phases, between 1200 and 1600. Walraversijde has been studied more thoroughly...

, a medieval fishing village on the coast of West Flanders in Holland.

External links

Microdocs: City vs.village fishing
How to Save New England's Fishing Villages – ReasonOnline
A Baluchi fishing village
Teochow Fishing Village – China
Cua Van Floating Fishing Village
Seeb, Oman, a fishing village
The Norwegian Fishing Village Museum
History of Flakstad & Moskenes, Lofoten Islands
The archaeology of La Paloma, an ancient fishing village on the central coast of Peru
Fishing villages – Fiction – free books on the web.
Life in a fishing village behind Myanmar’s walls - stilt villages
Myanmar Movie, "The Story of Fishing Village" – youtube
Fishing Village Mumbai, India – video
Indochina Fishing Villages – photos

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Characteristics

Early villages

See also

External links