Perhaps they were fowlers.

Fishermen are going out to sea and carrying their cell phones.

Fisherman's Wharf. Frank used to come here a lot.

Second, fishers catch commercially valuable fish that do not meet legal minimum size and weight requirements or exceed catch quotas.

In both cases, this waste is not included in estimates of the total operating costs or the price of fish, except to the extent that extra time is required to free or dispose of the bycatch, repair damaged nets and lines and empty nets otherwise crowded with unwanted species.

But in the nine years before Drake struck oil, in 1859, at least five sixths of that whale oil illuminating market disappeared, thanks to fatal competitors, chiefly oil and gas made from coal, to which the whalers had not been paying attention.

It is estimated that global commercial fisheries generate roughly 44 billion pounds of wasted catch each year, including over 3 billion pounds by U.S. fishermen alone. Bycatch is both a problem for target as well as non target species.