People interact with fish in multiple ways, whether practically, in folklore and religion, or in art. They have economic importance in the fishing industry and fish farming; these industries provide some people with an income, and the general population with fish as food. Other practical uses of fish include recreational fishing and their use in biological research. Fish play symbolic roles in religion, mythology, folklore, and fairy tale, where stories about fish have been told in cultures around the world for thousands of years. Fish have similarly been depicted in art, literature, film, and music in many cultures. Academic study of fish in culture is called ethnoichthyology. Both academically and in practice, all these aspects of fish in people's lives are interrelated.
Fish provide people with food and recreation, support a wide range of industrial processes, and contribute to human society in many ways such as through health care, jewellery, tools, weapons, items of clothing, and musical instruments. These many uses contribute to people's nutritional and economic security and to social cohesion. In addition, fish contribute important advantages to ecosystems, not least serving as "canaries" indicating the presence of ecological threats, and support sustainable forms of aquaculture. [1] [2] Among traditional peoples, fish both contribute an important part of the diet and economy, and figure in rituals and beliefs. [3] Fishing for food can influence aspects of practical culture including clothing, food culture, and architecture; spiritual aspects including customs, art, faith, and cultural attitudes; and social elements including a people's social system, norms, and the structure of society. [4] There is a two-way interplay between human attitudes, beliefs, and symbols concerning fish, such as in Christianity, and people's practical use of and dependency on fish: "Fish not only guarantee the necessities of human life as food for the world, but they also establish human and fish relationships that link social, cultural, traditional, and religious life to every human being." [5]
Throughout history, humans have utilized fish as a food source. Historically, most fish protein has come by means of catching wild fish. However, fish farming, which has been practiced since about 3,500 BC in China, [6] is becoming increasingly important in many nations, and by 2016, more than 50% of the seafood brought to market was produced by aquaculture (of fish and shellfish). [7] Overall, about one-sixth of the world's protein is estimated to be provided by fish. [8] Fisheries provide income for millions of people. [8] [9]
Fish have been used to provide a wide range of materials other than food, both by indigenous peoples and in modern industrial production. [1] Peoples of the Arctic such as the Nivkh people of Northern Russia have used fish skins to make clothing. [10] Fish bones have been used to bioremediate heavy metals such as lead from contaminated soil. [11] [12] In Tasmania, indigenous people used fishbones as tools to pierce holes in shells, to allow these to be strung and worn as jewellery. [13]
Part | Uses |
---|---|
Eye | Jewellery |
Tongue | Grater |
Teeth | Scissors, weapons |
Liver | lubricants |
Connective tissue | Aphrodisiacs, biofuel, caulks/sealants, moisturisers |
Intestine | Musical instruments |
Swim bladder | Fining agents |
Milt | Adsorbents |
Bone | Glue, skincare, toothpaste |
Skin | Burn treatment, abrasives, fashion accessories |
Scales | Bioplastics, treating pollutants |
Otolith | Jewelry, lucky charms |
Whole fish | Curios |
Fish have been recognized as a source of beauty for almost as long as used for food, appearing in cave art, being raised as ornamental fish in ponds, and displayed in aquariums in homes, offices, or public settings. Some smaller and more colourful species, and sometimes painted fish, serve as ornamental fish in ponds and aquariums, and as pets. [14]
Angling is fishing for pleasure or competition, with a rod, reel, line, hooks and bait. It has been practised for centuries, providing pleasure and employment. [15]
Medaka and zebrafish are used as research models for studies in genetics and developmental biology. The zebrafish is the most commonly used laboratory vertebrate, [14] offering the advantages of similar genetics to mammals, small size, simple environmental needs, transparent larvae permitting non-invasive imaging, plentiful offspring, rapid growth, and the ability to absorb mutagens added to their water. [16]
Fish have had symbolic significance in culture and religion for thousands of years. In-and-Out Fish Design is a constant theme in prehistoric and historical Persian art, which demonstrates two swinging fishes named Kar-Mahi. Ahura Mazda sets these fishes on guard of roots of the tree of life, named Gukaran, so they are eternal sentries of worldly life, in Persian culture. [17]
In ancient Mesopotamia, fish offerings were made to the gods from the beginnings of human settlement in the area. [18] Fish were also a major symbol of Enki, the god of water. [18] Fish frequently appear as a filling motif on cylinder seals from the Old Babylonian period (c. 1830 BC – c. 1531 BC), usually in close proximity to malevolent forces, such as demons. [18] Neo-Assyrian (911 BC – 609 BC) cylinder seals sometimes show fish resting on tables, which may be altars. [18] The Assyrian King Sennacherib is recorded as having thrown a golden fish into the sea along with another golden object to accompany an offering of a golden boat to Ea (the East Semitic equivalent of Enki). [18] Starting during the Kassite Period (c. 1600 BC – c. 1155 BC), healers and exorcists dressed in ritual garb resembling the bodies of fish. [18] This continued until the early Persian Period (550 BC – 330 BC). [18] During the Seleucid Period (312 BC – 63 BC), the legendary Babylonian culture hero Oannes, described by Berossus, was said to have dressed in the skin of a fish. [18] Fish were sacred to the Syrian goddess Atargatis [19] and, during her festivals, only her priests were permitted to eat them. [19]
The central figure of the Book of Jonah—a work of Jewish literature from the fourth century BCE—is a man named Jonah who is called on by God to serve as a prophet. Jonah refuses, fleeing the city by boat, but this is quickly discovered by the crew after they encounter a supernatural storm. The crew casts Jonah into the sea, where he is swallowed by a giant fish, which vomits Jonah out onto the shore of the land where he was called to be a prophet after three days. [20] [21] [22] The book was later included as part of the Hebrew Bible, or Christian Old Testament, [23] [24] and a version of the story it contains is summarized in Surah 37:139-148 of the Quran. [25] Early Christians used the ichthys , a symbol of a fish, to represent Jesus, [19] though the precise reasons for this are not fully known. [26]
In the dhamma of Buddhism, a pair of golden fish symbolize happiness as they have complete freedom of movement in the water. [27] Among the deities said to take the form of a fish are Ikatere of the Polynesians, [28] the shark-god Kāmohoaliʻi of Hawaiʻi, [29] and Matsya of the Hindus. [30]
The astrological symbol Pisces ('the fishes') is based on a constellation of the same name, visible in the northern hemisphere. There is another fish constellation visible in the southern hemisphere, Piscis Austrinus. [31]
Fish with magical abilities appear in fairy and folk tale traditions all over the world. Legends of half-human, half-fish mermaids are common in European folklore, retold in the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. In British folk tales, mermaids both predict and bring ill fortune. [33] The international classification of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index includes number 303, "The Twins or Blood Brothers", as in the Spanish fairy tale The Knights of the Fish , and the Albanian heroic tale The Twins . The story runs that a poor fisherman captures a fish three times; on the third occasion, the fish resigns to its fate and convinces the fisherman to cook and give part of its flesh to his wife, his dogs and his horses. Twin boys are born to the fisherman and his wife, two hounds to the dogs and two foals to the horses; in some versions it is triplets. [34] As another example, tale number 507, "The Monster's Bride", varies the theme of Grateful Dead , as in the Armenian fairy tale of The Golden-Headed Fish . The hero (a fisherman's son, a prince) releases a fish back into the ocean. Some time later, he meets a strange companion and together they liberate a princess from a curse. At the end of the tale, the companion reveals he was the fish. [35] Among the numerous other tales are number 554, "The Grateful Animals"; [36] number 555, "The Fisherman and his Wife"; [37] and number 675, "The Fool Whose Wishes Always Come True" or "The Lazy Boy". [38]
Fish feature prominently in film, including both live-action movies like The Little Mermaid (2023), The Incredible Mr. Limpet, and The Old Man and the Sea, [39] as well as animated films like Finding Nemo [40] and Shark Tale. Large fish, particularly sharks, have frequently been the subject of horror films and thrillers, most notably the novel Jaws , which spawned a series of films of the same name. [41] Piranha are depicted in a similar light to sharks in films such as Piranha . [42]
Izaak Walton's 1653 book The Compleat Angler celebrates the practice of recreational fishing in prose and verse. [43] The folk singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl's 1960 The Fish Gutters' Song speaks of the "fisher lassies" who travel from Scotland to Yarmouth in Norfolk "tae gut the herrin'" where they can find work. [44] In comic books, characters themed around fish are often portrayed as villains. [45]
Fish have been frequent subjects in art, reflecting their economic importance, for at least 14,000 years. They were commonly worked into patterns in Ancient Egypt, acquiring mythological significance in Ancient Greece and Rome, and from there into Christianity as a religious symbol; artists in China and Japan similarly use fish images symbolically. Fish became common in Renaissance art, with still life paintings reaching a peak of popularity in the Netherlands in the 17th century. In the 20th century, different artists such as Klee, Magritte, Matisse and Picasso used representations of fish to express radically different themes, from attractive to violent. [46] The zoologist and artist Ernst Haeckel painted fish and other animals in his 1904 Kunstformen der Natur . Haeckel had become convinced by Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt that making accurate depictions of unfamiliar natural forms, such as from the deep oceans, he could not only discover "the laws of their origin and evolution but also to press into the secret parts of their beauty by sketching and painting". [47]
Fish have been depicted in classical music in works such as Franz Schubert's Trout Quintet , composed in 1819. [48] The piece formed the basis of Christopher Nupen's 1969 film The Trout, in which Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim and Zubin Mehta perform the quintet at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. [49]
Fish are the subjects of many popular songs and folksongs. The Scottish "(Wha'll Buy My) Caller Herrin'" sings of the dangers of a fisherman's life, [50] while the nursery rhyme "Once I Caught a Fish Alive" is a counting song for small children. [51] J. R. R. Tolkien gives the monster Gollum a riddling song about fish; it appears in different versions in his fantasy works The Hobbit ("Alive without breath/As cold as death") and The Lord of the Rings ("The cold hard lands/They bites our hands"). [52] [53]
Academic study of fish in culture is called ethnoichthyology. It is an interdisciplinary field that examines human knowledge of fish, the uses of fish, and the importance of fish in different human societies. It draws on knowledge from many different areas including ichthyology, economics, oceanography, and marine botany. [54] The term ethnoichthyology was in use as early as 1967 when it appeared in a paper by W.T. Morrill. [55]
Jonah the son of Amittai or Jonas is a Jewish prophet in the Hebrew Bible hailing from Gath-hepher in the Northern Kingdom of Israel around the 8th century BCE. He is the central figure of the Book of Jonah, one of the minor prophets, which details his reluctance in delivering the judgment of God to the city of Nineveh in the Neo-Assyrian Empire. After he is swallowed by a large sea creature and then released, he returns to the divine mission.
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques include trawling, longlining, jigging, hand-gathering, spearing, netting, angling, shooting and trapping, as well as more destructive and often illegal techniques such as electrocution, blasting and poisoning.
The serpent, or snake, is one of the oldest and most widespread mythological symbols. The word is derived from Latin serpens, a crawling animal or snake. Snakes have been associated with some of the oldest rituals known to humankind and represent dual expression of good and evil.
The term carp is a generic common name for numerous species of freshwater fish from the family Cyprinidae, a very large clade of ray-finned fish mostly native to Eurasia. While carp are prized quarries and are valued as both food and ornamental fish in many parts of the Old World, they are considered trash fish and invasive pests in many parts of Africa, Australia and most of the United States.
The milkfish is a widespread species of ray-finned fish found throughout the Indo-Pacific. It is the sole living species in the family Chanidae, and the only living member of the genus Chanos. The repeating scientific name (tautonym) is from Greek khanos. They are grouped in the order Gonorhynchiformes and are most closely related to the Ostariophysi—freshwater fishes such as carps, catfish, and loaches.
A fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish.
Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for commercial profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the world, but those who practice it as an industry must often pursue fish far into the ocean under adverse conditions. Large-scale commercial fishing is called industrial fishing.
The cultural depiction of cats and their relationship to humans is old and stretches back over 9,500 years. Cats are featured in the history of many nations, are the subject of legend, and are a favourite subject of artists and writers.
"The Fisherman and His Wife" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. The tale is of Aarne–Thompson type 555, about dissatisfaction and greed. It may be classified as an anti-fairy tale.
Frogs play a variety of roles in culture, appearing in folklore and fairy tales such as the Brothers Grimm story of The Frog Prince. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, frogs symbolized fertility, while in classical antiquity, the Greeks and Romans associated frogs with fertility, harmony, and licentiousness.
A fish is an aquatic, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fins and a hard skull, but lacking limbs with digits. Fish can be grouped into the more basal jawless fish and the more common jawed fish, the latter including all living cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as the extinct placoderms and acanthodians. Most fish are cold-blooded, their body temperature varying with the surrounding water, though some large active swimmers like white shark and tuna can hold a higher core temperature. Many fish can communicate acoustically with each other, such as during courtship displays.
Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki.
The lion has been an important symbol to humans for tens of thousands of years. The earliest graphic representations feature lions as organized hunters with great strength, strategies, and skills. In later depictions of human cultural ceremonies, lions were often used symbolically and may have played significant roles in magic, as deities or close association with deities, and served as intermediaries and clan identities.
Fishing in India is a major sector within the economy of India contributing 1.07% of its total GDP. The fishing sector in India supports the livelihood of over 28 million people in the country, especially within the marginalized and vulnerable communities. India is the third largest fish producing country in the world accounting for 7.96% of the global production and second largest producer of fish through aquaculture, after China. The total fish production during the FY 2020-21 is estimated at 14.73 million metric tonnes. According to the National Fisheries Development Board the Fisheries Industry generates an export earnings of Rs 334.41 billion. Centrally sponsored schemes will increase exports by Rs 1 lakh crore in FY25. 65,000 fishermen have been trained under these schemes from 2017 to 2020. Freshwater fishing consists of 55% of total fish production.
Fishing is a prehistoric practice dating back at least 70,000 years. Since the 16th century, fishing vessels have been able to cross oceans in pursuit of fish, and since the 19th century it has been possible to use larger vessels and in some cases process the fish on board. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping.
Bangladesh being a first line littoral state of the Indian Ocean has a very good source of marine resources in the Bay of Bengal. The country has an exclusive economic zone of 41,000 square miles (110,000 km2), which is 73% of the country's land area. On the other hand, Bangladesh is a small and developing country overloaded with almost unbearable pressure of human population. In the past, people of Bangladesh were mostly dependent upon land-based proteins. But, the continuous process of industrialisation and urbanisation consumes the limited land area. Now there is no other way than to harvest the vast under water protein from the Bay of Bengal, which can meet the country's demand.
Ukrainian folklore is the folk tradition which has developed in Ukraine and among ethnic Ukrainians. The earliest examples of folklore found in Ukraine is the layer of pan-Slavic folklore that dates back to the ancient Slavic mythology of the Eastern Slavs. Gradually, Ukrainians developed a layer of their own distinct folk culture. Folklore has been an important tool in defining and retaining a cultural distinctiveness in Ukraine in the face of strong assimilatory pressures from neighboring lands.
The harvesting and consuming of seafoods are ancient practices that may date back to at least the Upper Paleolithic period which dates to between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. Isotopic analysis of the skeletal remains of Tianyuan man, a 40,000-year-old modern human from eastern Asia, has shown that he regularly consumed freshwater fish. Archaeology features such as shell middens, discarded fish bones and cave paintings show that sea foods were important for survival and consumed in significant quantities. During this period, most people lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and were, of necessity, constantly on the move. However, where there are early examples of permanent settlements such as those at Lepenski Vir, they are almost always associated with fishing as a major source of food.
Human uses of animals include both practical uses, such as the production of food and clothing, and symbolic uses, such as in art, literature, mythology, and religion. All of these are elements of culture, broadly understood. Animals used in these ways include fish, crustaceans, insects, molluscs, mammals and birds.
Animals had a variety of roles and functions in ancient Greece and Rome. Fish and birds were served as food. Species such as donkeys and horses served as work animals. The military used elephants. It was common to keep animals such as parrots, cats, or dogs as pets. Many animals held important places in the Graeco-Roman religion or culture. For example, owls symbolized wisdom and were associated with Athena. Humans would form close relationships with their animals in antiquity. Philosophers often debated about the nature of animals and humans. Many believed that the fundamental difference was that humans were capable of reason while animals were not. Philosophers such as Porphyry advocated for veganism.