Canary Islands

Canarian fishing culture has an old artisanal layer and a very large modern visitor layer, and the two share a small amount of water.

THE ARTISANAL FISHERY IS ANCIENT AND SMALL-SCALE. Small boats working traps, lines and nets out of many small harbours for parrotfish, seabream, grouper and cephalopods is the continuing local pattern, organised through fishermen's guilds, and the volcanic coastline with almost no shelf means it has always been a fishery conducted close to deep water.

THE TUNA FISHERY IS THE ARCHIPELAGO'S COMMERCIAL SIGNATURE. Pole-and-line and live-bait fishing for skipjack and bigeye tuna is a long-standing Canarian method, and it is the same selective approach the Maldives record describes, operating in the eastern Atlantic.

SHORE ANGLING IS WIDELY PRACTISED, from rock and harbour into deep water, and it is a local activity as much as a visitor one.

THE VISITOR ECONOMY IS DOMINANT and it brings charter fishing, dive tourism and a great deal of coastal development with it, concentrated on particular islands and coasts.

CEPHALOPODS AND SHELLFISH ARE ORDINARY FOOD AND ORDINARY QUARRY, and the local kitchen reflects an Atlantic-African rather than a European mainland fish culture.

THE ISLANDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE, and locals are quick to say so. The eastern islands are dry, low and wind-exposed; the western ones are high, wet and steep; and the fishing differs accordingly.

AND THE SEA IS RESPECTED. A coast where the shelf is negligible and Atlantic swell arrives unimpeded produces a genuine local caution about rock fishing that a visitor should adopt.

Every Canarian discipline follows from one fact: there is essentially no continental shelf, and deep water starts at the shore.

SHORE FISHING INTO DEEP WATER is the characteristic practice. Volcanic rock dropping steeply into blue water means that a shore angler is fishing depths that would require a boat almost anywhere in Europe, and the tackle and methods reflect that — float fishing at depth, heavy bottom fishing, and lure work for pelagic species from the rocks.

BOAT AND CHARTER FISHING REACHES BLUE WATER IN MINUTES. The absence of a shelf means big-game grounds are a short run offshore, which is the archipelago's principal attraction for visiting anglers and the basis of its charter industry.

POLE-AND-LINE TUNA FISHING is the traditional commercial method, using live bait to raise the school and taking fish one at a time, and it survives here for the same reasons it survives in the Maldives.

TRAP AND LINE FISHING IS THE ARTISANAL DISCIPLINE, worked from small boats over hard ground close to shore.

SPEARFISHING IS PRACTISED ON THE ROCKY COAST in clear warm water and is separately licensed under the Spanish framework.

EGING AND CEPHALOPOD FISHING is ordinary practice from harbours and rocks after dark.

SHORE GATHERING FOR LIMPETS AND SHELLFISH has a long local history and is now constrained by conservation rules, because the intertidal here is small in area and has been heavily used.

AND WHAT DOES NOT EXIST IS A BEACH FISHERY OF THE ATLANTIC KIND. There is very little sand, almost no estuary and no river, so the surfcasting tradition of the Iberian mainland has no ground to happen on.

The Canarian fish vocabulary is Spanish with strong local specificity, and the names do not map onto mainland Spanish usage.

VIEJA NAMES THE PARROTFISH, the archipelago's most emblematic inshore food fish and one whose local importance a visitor would not guess from a European fish list. It is a herbivorous reef fish, it is central to the local kitchen, and it is a good indicator that this is an Atlantic-African fauna rather than a European one.

CHERNE NAMES THE WRECKFISH AND RELATED DEEP GROUPERS, taken from the deep water that begins close to shore, and it is a prestige fish locally.

SAMA NAMES THE DENTEX-TYPE SEABREAMS of the deeper rock, and the seabream group generally has a rich Canarian vocabulary.

LAPA NAMES THE LIMPET, gathered from the intertidal for as long as people have lived here and now subject to conservation constraint because the resource is small and the pressure long-standing.

CHARCO NAMES A ROCK POOL OR NATURAL SEAWATER POOL in the lava, and these are a defining feature of the coastline both as habitat and as the place people swim, because beaches are scarce.

CALIMA NAMES THE SAHARAN DUST EVENT that periodically covers the islands in haze and fine dust carried on easterly winds. It affects visibility, air quality and comfort, and it is a genuine planning consideration.

AND MALPAÍS NAMES THE ROUGH LAVA GROUND that much of the coastline consists of — broken, sharp, difficult to walk on and unforgiving of a fall, which is a practical fact for any shore angler here.

The Canaries' fishing history runs from a pre-conquest indigenous fishery to a modern service economy in a comparatively short span.

THE PRE-CONQUEST POPULATION FISHED AND GATHERED EXTENSIVELY. Archaeological deposits across the islands contain fish bone, limpet and shellfish remains in quantity, showing systematic use of the intertidal and inshore resource before European contact, and stone tidal traps built on the shore survive in places.

THE ISLANDS BECAME AN ATLANTIC WAYPOINT after the fifteenth century, provisioning ships on the route to the Americas, and the fishery served that traffic as well as the local population.

THE SAHARAN BANK FISHERY WAS THE ECONOMIC MAINSTAY for a long period. Canarian fleets fished the highly productive upwelling waters off the north-west African coast, landing and processing in the islands, and the loss of access to those grounds in the later twentieth century was a substantial economic blow.

TUNA AND SARDINE CANNING supported an industry in the islands built on both local and African-bank catches.

TOURISM TRANSFORMED THE ECONOMY FROM THE 1960s, and the transformation was as complete here as in the Balearics. Fishing became a minor sector, coastal development altered the shore, and charter fishing became a visitor service.

BIG-GAME FISHING DEVELOPED A REPUTATION, particularly for blue marlin off some of the islands, on the strength of deep water close to shore.

AND CONSERVATION ARRIVED LATE AND SUBSTANTIALLY, with marine reserves, a national park network on land and sea, and constraints on intertidal gathering reflecting how heavily used a small resource had become.

The Canaries are an autonomous community of Spain with substantial fisheries competence, and the structure follows that.

THE REGIONAL GOVERNMENT ADMINISTERS INSHORE FISHERIES, within the Spanish national and European framework, and it is the body that issues recreational licences and sets local measures.

RECREATIONAL FISHING REQUIRES A LICENCE with separate categories for shore, boat and underwater fishing, and bag limits, minimum sizes and species restrictions attach to it. Visitors from unlicensed jurisdictions need to arrange this in advance.

UNDERWATER FISHING IS SEPARATELY LICENSED AND CONDITIONED, with equipment restrictions and a prohibition on combining it with breathing apparatus.

MARINE RESERVES EXIST AROUND SEVERAL ISLANDS with graduated protection zones, and their boundaries decide what may happen more directly than any general rule.

INTERTIDAL GATHERING IS CONSTRAINED. Limpet and shellfish collection has been restricted because a small intertidal resource has been used intensively for a very long time, and closed periods and size limits apply.

THE ARCHIPELAGO IS AN OUTERMOST REGION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, which affects how European fisheries measures apply here and gives some scope for regionally adapted rules.

CETACEAN WATCHING IS SEPARATELY REGULATED and is economically significant, with rules on approach distances that affect boat operation generally.

AND FISHINGHQ DOES NOT STATE WHAT ANY OF THIS CURRENTLY PERMITS. The regional fisheries directorate and the reserve managing bodies are the durable answer.

The Canarian fishing calendar is set by water temperature at the margins and by wind almost all the time.

THERE IS NO CLOSED BIOLOGICAL SEASON IN THE NORTHERN EUROPEAN SENSE. Water temperature varies within a few degrees across the year, so inshore species are available continuously and there is no thermal shutdown.

THE TRADE WINDS ARE THE CONSTANT. Persistent north-easterlies blow for most of the year, and they decide which coast of which island is fishable on a given day. The northern and eastern coasts are exposed; the southern and western ones are in the lee. Local knowledge here is largely knowledge of where to go in a given wind.

SUMMER IS THE BIG-GAME SEASON. Warmer water brings blue marlin, tuna and other blue-water species closer, and the charter fishery concentrates in the warmer months.

WINTER BRINGS ATLANTIC SWELL. Depressions far to the north send long-period ground swell onto the northern coasts, and it arrives with no local weather to explain it. That is the dangerous condition for shore fishing and it is a seasonal one.

THE CALIMA IS AN EPISODIC RATHER THAN SEASONAL EVENT, though it clusters in certain months: Saharan dust carried west on easterly winds reduces visibility, raises temperature and affects comfort and air quality.

CEPHALOPOD AVAILABILITY SHIFTS WITH WATER TEMPERATURE rather than with a calendar, and cuttlefish come shallow to spawn in the warmer part of the year.

AND THE PRACTICAL POINT FOR A VISITOR is that the archipelago is fishable year-round and the question is never whether but where — which is the opposite of most of the fisheries in this catalogue.

Most fishing coasts are defined by what they have. These are defined by two things they do not.

THERE IS ALMOST NO CONTINENTAL SHELF. The islands are volcanic peaks standing in deep ocean, rising steeply from thousands of metres. The gently shelving shallow ground that surrounds a continental coast barely exists here — depths of hundreds of metres occur within a short distance of the shore, and in places genuinely deep water lies within casting range of a rock platform.

That single fact rearranges everything. Species that elsewhere require a boat trip are a shore proposition. Amberjack, bonito and other genuine pelagics can be reached from the rocks, which is true almost nowhere in Europe. The blue-water fishery starts within a few miles rather than over the horizon. And there is no broad shallow nursery ground of the kind that supports the flatfish and juvenile-fish communities of northern Europe.

THERE ARE NO RIVERS. No permanent freshwater input means no estuaries, no salinity gradient, no turbid nutrient plume, and none of the fishery that depends on them. An angler arriving from Atlantic Europe finds an entire category of ground simply missing — and with it the bass, mullet and flounder fishing that ground supports.

WHAT IS PRESENT INSTEAD is volcanic rock coast: lava platform, boulder, cliff, blowhole and the natural rock pools called charcos. Beaches are black or pale depending on whether the sand is volcanic or shell-derived. Some seagrass grows on sheltered sand.

AND THE WATER IS WARM, CLEAR AND NUTRIENT-POOR. The Canary Current brings cooler water down the African coast and there is localised upwelling, but inshore the water is clear and biologically poorer than the African mainland at the same latitude. Clear water means fish that inspect tackle, which is why light lines and refined presentation matter here far more than power does.

THE HAZARD FOLLOWS FROM THE FIRST ABSENCE. With no shelf to dissipate it, Atlantic swell reaches the lava platforms having lost very little energy. Waves are larger and less predictable than the wind suggests, and people are washed from rock platforms here regularly.

The Canaries sit where three faunal influences overlap, and the species list reflects it in a way no mainland European coast does.

THE RESIDENT INSHORE FISH are largely eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean in character: sea breams of several species, wrasse, and the parrotfish known locally as vieja, which is one of the most characteristic and most valued food fish of the islands. Moray eels are abundant in the lava ground and are a genuine handling hazard rather than a curiosity. Groupers occur and have been reduced by fishing pressure in accessible areas.

THE PELAGIC COMPONENT is what makes the islands unusual. Amberjack, bonito, barracuda and various tuna species come within reach of the shore because the deep water does, and shore-based spinning and popping for genuine pelagics is a mainstream discipline here rather than an eccentricity. Offshore, the blue water holds tuna, wahoo and billfish and supports a substantial charter sector.

WHAT IS ABSENT is the northern European inshore list. No bass fishery of consequence, no estuarine species, no flatfish fishery of the kind the sandy shelf coasts of Europe support — because the ground those species need is not here.

AND THE SUBTROPICAL ELEMENT introduces species most European anglers will not have handled, some of which require identification before touching. Moray dentition, scorpionfish spines and several venomous species occur on ground that is fished casually from the rocks.

A CAUTION ON CONSUMPTION. Some larger reef and pelagic predators in subtropical Atlantic waters have been associated with ciguatera, and the risk varies by locality and by fish size in ways no general rule captures. That is a matter for current local health advice rather than for a general statement here.

AND THE SPECIES RULES DIFFER FROM THE MAINLAND. Protected species, minimum sizes and restrictions on what may be taken by which method are set regionally and vary between islands and inside marine protected areas. Establish the current position with the Canarian regional authority before keeping anything.

Anglers arriving here bring a mental model of a rock coast built on granite, limestone or sandstone, and lava does not behave like any of them. That mismatch, on a holiday coast where the danger is not expected at all, is the shape of the problem.

WHAT IS PHYSICALLY DIFFERENT ABOUT LAVA. It is abrasive rather than smooth, so a fall grazes and lacerates where the same fall on worn granite would bruise. It is sharp-edged, frequently in the form of broken plates and spines. It is holed and undercut, so the surface is full of ankle-sized voids that are invisible under water or in poor light. And it has blowholes: passages connecting the sea to the platform surface through which water is forced upward with real violence, in places a long way back from the water's edge. A person walking a lava platform is walking a surface that can be structurally unsound underfoot and can vent from beneath.

WHICH MEANS THE FOOTWEAR DECISION IS NOT COSMETIC HERE. Stiff, gripping, ankle-supporting boots are doing work on this ground that trainers cannot do, and most of the injuries are ankles turned in holes rather than anything dramatic.

THE SWELL ARRIVES WITH ALMOST NOTHING TAKEN OUT OF IT. These islands sit in deep Atlantic water with no continental shelf in front of them, and a shelf is what normally bleeds energy out of an approaching swell before it reaches a coast. Without one, waves reach exposed northern and western platforms carrying close to their full ocean energy, and they are larger and less predictable than the local wind suggests. People are washed off regularly.

AND THEN THE COAST REFUSES THE RECOVERY. This is the part that turns immersion into fatality and it is specific to this geology: there is no shelving margin, the water at the platform edge is immediately deep, and the rock a person tries to climb back onto is a vertical or undercut abrasive face with surge running up and down it. Getting out unaided is frequently not possible even for somebody uninjured, and a person who has been dragged once across lava is not uninjured.

THE CONTEXT MAKES IT WORSE RATHER THAN BETTER. This is a destination coast: a large proportion of the people on those platforms are visitors, fishing unfamiliar ground, without local knowledge of which ledges are workable in which swell, and frequently alone.

WHAT ACTUALLY HELPS. Check swell — height, period and direction — rather than wind, and treat the northern and western coasts as different propositions from the southern and eastern on any given day. Watch a platform through several full sets from high ground before going down onto it, and pick a position with an escape route upward rather than only a place to stand. Wear a buoyancy aid on the rocks. Do not fish exposed platforms alone. Wear boots. And take the sun seriously: ultraviolet is high all year, it reflects off pale ground and water, and long sessions on shadeless rock produce dehydration that degrades judgement before it produces symptoms.