The Stade is a shingle beach in Hastings Old Town, Hastings, East Sussex, England. It has been used for beaching boats for more than a thousand years. It is now home to Europe's largest fleet of beach-launched fishing boats.
The word stade is a Saxon term meaning landing place.
The beach was originally a small landing area; hence the small footprint of the net shops. The building of the 1887 groyne at Rock-A-Nore and the 1896 harbour, however, stopped the eastward longshore transport of shingle along the coast, which is the function of groynes. As a result, the Stade steadily grew seaward, providing new room for the fishing fleet and necessary amenities.
Present-day fishing
View of the Stade and the Net Shops
Europe's biggest fleet of beach-launched fishing boats are based on The Stade. They must be hauled from the sea after each trip, so they can be no longer than about ten metres. This means that they can only carry small amounts of gear and travel just a few miles. As a result the fleet has always fished in an ecologically sound way.[citation needed]
visit1066country.com describes The Stade and its associated fishing fleet as one of the most exhilarating examples of living history in the United Kingdom, keeping alive a thousand years of techniques and traditions. The Sea Fish Industry Authority described The Stade "as near perfect a fishery as could be devised", because of the environmentally sound methods used by the fishermen (which includes changing their net size to allow young cod to escape and keep stocks high). Visitors are welcome to witness the fleet in action, but must respect the fact that the area is very much a working beach with many hidden perils.
Net shops
The net shops
A famous and unique part of the old town are the Net Shops. These are tall black wooden sheds which were built to provide a weather proof store for the fishing gear made from natural materials to prevent them from rotting in wet weather. The sheds are tarred (hence the colour) and weatherboarded.
The sheds were originally built on posts to allow the sea to go underneath, however more shingle has built up and the sea does not reach the huts anymore. The beach area, on which the Sheds stand, built up after groynes were erected in 1834, however the limited space meant the sheds had to grow upwards, even though some sheds do have cellars.
A common misconception[according to whom?] is that the sheds were used for drying the nets, hence the height. This is incorrect: nets were dried on the beach, and the sheds were built for net storage – the height is due to the limited space, and inside the sheds have always had multiple floors.
Chesil Beach in Dorset, England is one of three major shingle beach structures in Britain. Its name is derived from the Old English ceosel or cisel, meaning "gravel" or "shingle". It runs for a length of 29 kilometres (18 mi) from West Bay to the Isle of Portland and in places is up to 15 metres (50 ft) high and 200 metres (660 ft) wide. Behind the beach is the Fleet, a shallow tidal lagoon. Both are part of the Jurassic Coast and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and together form an SSSI and Ramsar Site.
A fishing trawler is a commercial fishing vessel designed to operate fishing trawls. Trawling is a method of fishing that involves actively dragging or pulling a trawl through the water behind one or more trawlers. Trawls are fishing nets that are pulled along the bottom of the sea or in midwater at a specified depth. A trawler may also operate two or more trawl nets simultaneously.
Gillnetting is a fishing method that uses gillnets: vertical panels of netting that hang from a line with regularly spaced floaters that hold the line on the surface of the water. The floats are sometimes called "corks" and the line with corks is generally referred to as a "cork line." The line along the bottom of the panels is generally weighted. Traditionally this line has been weighted with lead and may be referred to as "lead line." A gillnet is normally set in a straight line. Gillnets can be characterized by mesh size, as well as colour and type of filament from which they are made. Fish may be caught by gillnets in three ways:
Wedged – held by the mesh around the body.
Gilled – held by mesh slipping behind the opercula.
Tangled – held by teeth, spines, maxillaries, or other protrusions without the body penetrating the mesh.
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 earth, but those who practice it as an industry must often pursue fish far into the ocean under adverse conditions. Large-scale commercial fishing is also known as industrial fishing.
Cadgwith is a village and fishing port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is on the Lizard Peninsula between The Lizard and Coverack. It is in the civil parish of Grade Ruan.
Drift netting is a fishing technique where nets, called drift nets, hang vertically in the water column without being anchored to the bottom. The nets are kept vertical in the water by floats attached to a rope along the top of the net and weights attached to another rope along the bottom of the net. Drift nets generally rely on the entanglement properties of loosely affixed netting. Folds of loose netting, much like a window drapery, snag on a fish's tail and fins and wrap the fish up in loose netting as it struggles to escape. However the nets can also function as gill nets if fish are captured when their gills get stuck in the net. The size of the mesh varies depending on the fish being targeted. These nets usually target schools of pelagic fish.
The Scottish east coast fishery has been in existence for more than a thousand years, spanning the Viking Age right up to the present day.
A fishing vessel is a boat or ship used to catch fish in the sea, or on a lake or river. Many different kinds of vessels are used in commercial, artisanal and recreational fishing.
Fishing techniques are methods for catching fish. The term may also be applied to methods for catching other aquatic animals such as molluscs and edible marine invertebrates.
Hastings Old Town is an area in Hastings, England roughly corresponding to the extent of the town prior to the nineteenth century. It lies mainly within the easternmost valley of the current town. The shingle beach known as The Stade is home to the biggest beach-launched fishing fleet in Britain.
Rock-a-Nore is an urban area of Hastings, East Sussex, England, stretching from the Old Town area along Rock-a-Nore Road between the cliffs and the beach called The Stade. Its name was officially adopted in 1859 and derives from a former building "lyinge to the Mayne Rock against the north".
Fishing is a prehistoric practice dating back at least 40,000 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.
There are two major sources of fish in Uganda; one is from aquaculture, the other from fishing in rivers and lakes. The latter has made up the largest and most significant share of all fishing. Open water covers 15.3 percent of Uganda's surface and comprises five major lakes which are the main sources of fish in the country. Lake Victoria continues to be the most important water body in Uganda both in size and contribution to the total fish catch, followed by Lake Albert and Lake Kyoga.
Fishing in Cornwall, England, UK, has traditionally been one of the main elements of the economy of the county. Pilchard fishing and processing was a thriving industry in Cornwall from around 1750 to around 1880, after which it went into an almost terminal decline. During the 20th century the varieties of fish taken became much more diverse and crustaceans such as crab and lobster are now significant. Much of the catch is exported to France due to the higher prices obtainable there. Though fishing has been significantly damaged by overfishing, the Southwest Handline Fishermen's Association has started to revive the fishing industry. As of 2007, stocks are improving. The Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee is one of 12 such committees responsible for managing the corresponding Sea Fisheries District. The Isles of Scilly Sea Fisheries Committee is responsible for the Scilly district.
Worthing, a seaside resort on the English Channel coast of West Sussex, southeast England, has a long maritime history predating its late 18th-century emergence as a fashionable holiday and residential town. Fishing was a major economic activity for centuries, and still retains a small presence on Worthing's shingle shoreline. Smuggling, usually by sea, also contributed to the growing town's economy. The formerly sandy beach has changed over time, partly because of sea defence work carried out to alleviate concerns over flooding, which has affected the town several times. Large seaweed deposits, driven up from the sea bed, have caused occasional problems, while undersea rock formations off the coast have national importance as a wildlife habitat. There have been many shipwrecks and groundings in the area, and lifeboats were stationed in the town for many years.
The Brighton Fishing Museum is a registered independent museum established in co-operation with the local fishing community in 1994. This museum is dedicated to Brighton's fishing and seaside history. It is located a short distance to the west of Brighton Pier within an area known as the Fishing Quarter, occupying two of the arches on the Kings' Road, which runs along Brighton's beachfront. Admission is free and donations appreciated.
Walraversijde is an abandoned medieval fishing village on the Belgian coast, near Ostend. It was rediscovered in 1992 in a dune area, near a medieval dyke. Archeological research showed that it had been occupied, in two phases, between 1200 and 1600. Walraversijde has been studied more thoroughly and more systematically than any other medieval fishing community in Europe. The village has been partially reconstructed, and has a museum, Walraversijde Museum, dedicated to the site.
The Hastings Miniature Railway is a 10+1⁄4 in gauge miniature railway located on the seafront at Hastings, a seaside resort, town, and ancient cinque port, in East Sussex, England. Opened in 1948, it remains a popular tourist attraction. The line was re-opened in the summer of 2011 after a period of reconstruction and restoration, which coincided with a forced closure of the eastern part of the line, to facilitate building work on a new art gallery adjacent to the railway.
Henry Ramey Upcher was the second private lifeboat to be stationed in the English town of Sheringham in the county of Norfolk. She was launched on 4 September 1894 and stayed on station for 41 years until she was slowly retired from duty and by 1935 had ceased rescue work completely. The lifeboat is now on permanent display in her own museum housed in her converted original boat shed.
The Yorkshire coast fishery has long been part of the Yorkshire economy for centuries. The 114-mile (183 km) Yorkshire Coast, from the River Tees to the River Humber, has many ports both small and large where the fishing trade thrives. The historic ports at Hull and Whitby are important locations for the landing and processing of fish and shellfish. Scarborough and Bridlington are also sites of commercial fishing.
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