Although the West Indies has limited resources in terms of developing a large-scale fishing industry

Fishing industry

The fishing industry includes any industry or activity concerned with taking, culturing, processing, preserving, storing, transporting, marketing or selling fish or fish products....

, the value of fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 and sea products as a source of food has long been recognized. All Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 territories therefore have fishing industries.

Most Caribbean fishermen ply their trade from small boat

Boat

A boat is a watercraft of any size designed to float or plane, to provide passage across water. Usually this water will be inland or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is a...

s (4-11 meters). These small craft, often without protection from sun or rain, are forced to remain very close to shore, seldom going more than 16 kilometers offshore.

Methods

Several methods for catching fish are used:

1. Fillet (gill) nets
2. Trawling
   Trawling
   Trawling is a method of fishing that involves pulling a fishing net through the water behind one or more boats. The net that is used for trawling is called a trawl....
   
   
3. Lining
4. Seining
5. Fish pots and reels.

The method of fishing

Fishing

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....

 depends on the type and size of the fish to be caught.
Trawling is used to catch shrimp

Shrimp

Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...

, carite, snapper

Lutjanidae

Snappers are a family of perciform fish, mainly marine but with some members inhabiting estuaries, feeding in freshwater. Some are important food fish. One of the best known is the red snapper....

 and cavali. The main catches from seine and gill nets are king fish, shark

Shark

Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....

 and carite. Fish pot catches are red snapper

Red Snapper

Red Snapper may refer to:Fish:* Several species from the genus Lutjanus, for example the red snapper .* Several species from the genus Sebastes, for example the vermilion rockfish and yelloweye rockfish Red Snapper may refer to:Fish:* Several species from the genus Lutjanus, for example the red...

s and jacks.
Fishing is a year-round activity in the Caribbean and it directly emoploys thousands of people.

Sales and Marketing

A number of different methods of selling are used in the Caribbean. Most small-scale fishermen take some of the catch for their families and sell the rest at the beach. If there is a delay between catching the fish and eating it, then some form of processing has to take place. Three processing methods that are common in the Caribbean are:

• Salting
  Salting (food)
  Salting is the preservation of food with dry edible salt. It is related to pickling . It is one of the oldest methods of preserving food, and two historically significant salt-cured foods are dried and salted cod and salt-cured meat.Salting is used because most bacteria, fungi and other potentially...
  
  
• Smoking
• Fresh Fish

Salting

The fish is washed, gutted, salted, then dried in the sun, or in a special electrical drying unit. Among fish salted are salt are salmon

Salmon

Salmon is the common name for several species of fish in the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the same family are called trout; the difference is often said to be that salmon migrate and trout are resident, but this distinction does not strictly hold true...

, shark, grouper

Grouper

Groupers are fish of any of a number of genera in the subfamily Epinephelinae of the family Serranidae, in the order Perciformes.Not all serranids are called groupers; the family also includes the sea basses. The common name grouper is usually given to fish in one of two large genera: Epinephelus...

 and carite.

Smoking

The fish is washed, gutted. a little salt

Salt

In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...

 is added, then it is partly cooked over a smoking fire. Herring

Herring

Herring is an oily fish of the genus Clupea, found in the shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and the North Atlantic oceans, including the Baltic Sea. Three species of Clupea are recognized. The main taxa, the Atlantic herring and the Pacific herring may each be divided into subspecies...

s and jacks are normally preserved by this method.

Fresh Fish

The fish is washed, and passed through a machine which coats it with a film of ice

Ice

Ice is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...

. It is then wrapped in foil

Aluminium foil

Aluminium foil is aluminium prepared in thin metal leaves, with a thickness less than , thinner gauges down to are also commonly used. In the USA, foils are commonly gauged in mils. Standard household foil is typically thick and heavy duty household foil is typically .The foil is pliable, and...

.