Fishing is the act of catching fish. While historically used for gathering food, a purpose that lasts to this day, by the modern era the act has come to be seen as a sport, with competitions for technique and the quantity caught.
There are several methods for fishing, though not all of them are very sustainable. While mostly done around natural bodies of water, there are a number of purpose-built bodies of water that are explicitly meant for fishing. Despite the name, it's not just types of fish that are caught for food; other marine animals, including crustaceans such as crabs, shrimp and lobsters, and mollusks such as squid, cuttlefish and octopi, are also caught for food.
Fishing has been an important part of human culture since hunter-gatherer times, and is one of the few food production activities that have persisted from prehistory into the modern age, surviving both the Neolithic Revolution and successive Industrial Revolutions. In addition to being caught fish are sometimes kept long-term as preserved or living trophies. When bioblitzes occur, fish are typical caught, identified, and then released.
A key problem with modern fishing is that unregulated waters regularly result in fishermen drastically depleting specific species of marine life through overfishing. In some cases, however, fishermen are encouraged to catch invasive species in order to restore balance to the natural order.
According to the United Nations FAO statistics, the total number of commercial fishers and fish farmers is estimated to be 38 million. Fishing industries and aquaculture provide direct and indirect employment to over 500 million people in developing countries.
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- Fishing is usually shown using a fishing rod but there are other forms of fishing which a few examples of them includes spearfishing that's done with a harpoon or a trident.