Electronics in the fishing industry

Standard electronic equipment such as radar and ship´s logs are used in the fishing industry as in any seagoing trade. The more specialised equipment is the acoustic instrument used for finding fish. The development of commercial echo sounders owes much to their intelligent use by fishermen, and as a consequence they have diverged into specialist uses. It is likely that in the future the use of higher frequencies will become more widespread. Because acoustic instruments are used by navies to find submarines there is considerable fall out to the fishing industry, particularly in the use of research equipment. Some of this is used by fisheries scientists in the study of fish behaviour and in the assessment of fish stocks, but experience with advanced machines also leads to developments used directly by the fishermen. In the past large fishing vessels of the distant-water fleets have carried expensive equipment for locating fish. Since the establishing of national economic zones out to 200 miles, distant-water fleets have declined. They have been, or will be, replaced with more numerous smaller vessels, with smaller capacity to buy expensive equipment. The need to locate fish effectively remains, however, with cheaper machines scattered among more vessels.