Author: Karl Smallwood / Source: Today I Found Out
Kyle S. asks: Do people really fish with dynamite like they show in movies?
Fishing with dynamite, or blast fishing as it’s more accurately known, despite sounding like something more suited to a Looney Tunes cartoon, is a genuine and well-documented practice that is still commonplace in select areas of the globe today.
This is more than a little unfortunate for the many fish and marine animals that call the oceans and lakes their home due to the invariably cataclysmic impact the practice has on local aquatic ecosystems.Exactly when blast fishing first began is hard to pinpoint, but it should come as no surprise that it seems to have become popular within decades of dynamite being invented in 1867 (incidentally invented by Alfred Nobel, known today for the Nobel Prizes, but in his time as “the merchant of death”). While someone probably fished using improvised or homemade explosives prior to the invention of dynamite, the creation of a commercially available, relatively safe to handle and inexpensive explosive made it an option for the wider public.
As for the first documented references to this method of fishing, while it is certain that there were many earlier instances, the first we could find was an 1894 reference to a man being arrested for the crime of blast fishing, as reported in the New York Democratic Herald:
John Tickwich was arrested at Binnewater for destroying fish in one of the Binnewater lakes with dynamite. He had just exploded a number of cartridges, killing several hundred fish, and was gathering them into his boat when arrested. The prisoner will be taken before the State Game Protectors of Albany. Five years is the penalty for the crime.
Another early reference to blast fishing likewise comes from it being banned, this time in Hong Kong. In 1898, the government asked fishermen to stop blast fishing and that the fisherman police themselves over the matter. The governor also issued the following statement to fishermen: “The practice of fishing by means of dynamite is unnecessarily destructive and contrary to the spirit of true sport.”
As you might imagine, little seems to have changed as a result of this request, so the government stepped up their game on the issue, officially outlawing blast fishing in Hong Kong in 1903.
Despite the governments of the world seemingly realising blast fishing was a bad idea pretty much right from the start, this method of fishing’s popularity quite literally exploded throughout the world thanks to WW1 and WW2. Soldiers from both sides of each conflict made extensive use of explosives in fishing while stationed in foreign countries, a practice locals took notice of and copied. As an example of this, Japanese soldiers stationed in the Pacific during World War 2 are noted to have given out hand grenades to locals to be used for fishing. In return, the locals were required to share the fish they’d catch with the soldiers.
As a result of this, many Pacific islanders became incredibly adept in the handling of various explosive devices. This is knowledge they put to use after the war, taking advantage of the numerous explosives left behind to construct their own makeshift fishing bombs. For instance, on the small island nation of Palau, even as late as the 1960s, huts could be found containing large caches of undetonated WW2 explosives, with the compounds within the devices, or the devices themselves, slated to be later used for fishing.
As the availability of unused munitions from World War 2 dwindled, the islanders began to use more commercially available explosives or, more often for small time fishermen, simply constructed their…
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