Fishing Net - Floats

Floats

Some types of fishing nets, like seine and trammel, need to be kept hanging vertically in the water by means of floats at the top. Various light "corkwood"-type woods have been used around the world as fishing floats. Floats come in different sizes and shapes. These days they are often brightly coloured so they are easy to see.

• Small floats were usually made of cork, but fishermen in places where cork was not available used other materials, like birch bark in Finland and Russia, as well as the pneumatophores of Sonneratia caseolaris in Southeast Asia. These materials have now largely been replaced by plastic foam.

• Subsistence fishermen in some areas of Southeast Asia make corks for fishing nets by shaping the pneumatophores of Sonneratia caseolaris into small floats.

• Entelea: The wood was used by Māori for the floats of fishing nets

• Native Hawaiians made fishing net floats from low density wiliwili wood.

• Glass floats were large glass balls for long oceanic nets, now substituted by hard plastic. They are used not only to keep fishing nets afloat, but also for dropline and longline fishing. Often larger floats have marker flags for easier spotting.

• Glass floats are popular collectors’ items. They were once used by fishermen in many parts of the world to keep fishing nets, as well as longlines or droplines afloat.

• Finnish fishing net corks made out of birch bark and stones

• Cork float of a fisher net engraved with a protective pentagram, Hvide Sande, Denmark

• Dog conches are used to weigh down fishing nets