Fishing Gear Types 101: Purse Seines
Purse seining at work, with seine skiff, purse seiner and light boat. Photo by David Hills of @FishyPictures
Purse Seines
Squid, anchovy, and sardines
The large sardine boats of yesteryear, which made Monterey’s Cannery Row famous, used purse seines. Fast-forward to today, purse seines are still used in the iconic Monterey Bay squid fishery. These are large nets around a quarter-mile long and roughly 100 feet deep. They have four main components: a cork line, body web, a lead line, and a purse line.
Purse seines are set off the stern of large fishing boats with a small power skiff (a small open boat) towing one end of the net. The two boats form a circle around the schooling squid, anchovies, or sardines. The power skiff pulls alongside the larger fishing boat, passing off its end of the net to a crewmember on deck, and then ducks around the stern. The power skiff then tows the fishing boat from the side, making sure the large net doesn’t collapse around the large boat as the crew begins to haul gear. At the end of the haul, a bag of fish is pulled alongside the boat and pumped into the fish hold. Sets can range from a few tons to more than 50.
The name purse seine comes from the fact that the purse line acts as a purse-string cinching up the bottom of the net so no fish can escape. In this case, a heavy-duty hydraulic winch is used to pull in the purse line. This is also one of the most dangerous pieces of equipment on a seiner— if a crewmember isn’t careful and gets a hand or raingear caught in the bite, fingers, a hand, or even an arm could be lost.
Illustration courtesy of NOAA Fisheries.
While the purse line is being pulled in at the midships, the net is pulled aboard at the stern, starting with the boat end. Purse seiners in the Monterey Bay haul the net back on board with a drum or a power block. In the case of a drum, the net is wrapped around a larger spool attached to the back deck, whereas a hydraulic power block is hung from a boom with the net threaded through with crewmembers stacking the net on the back deck as it comes in.
In many ways, purse seines are still one of the most visible gear types on Monterey Bay. When California market squid appear in Monterey Bay during the late spring to early fall, so do the squid boats and light boats, which fish at night using lights to attract squid to the surface. If you look out over the bay and see boats lighting up the night sky, they’re fishing for squid.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife manages the squid fishery, while NOAA Fisheries and the Pacific Fishery Management Council manage anchovy and sardine fishing. The West Coast sardine fishery has been closed since 2015 due to low population levels in coastal waters.