ALBACORA 91 



deep-sea fishing expanded toward the tremendously- 

 popular recreation that it is today. Then, years later, 

 there was the element of science. After we had learned 

 as much about deep-sea fishing as we thought we ever 

 would, along came Luis Rivas to demonstrate how little 

 we knew about the fish themselves, or the waters in which 

 they lived and died. 



A scientist at Rutgers University, Dr. James Westman, 

 states that records exist which show that George Wash- 

 ington once chartered a boat and went fishing off the 

 shores of Long Island. No one knows exactly how long 

 men have indulged in deep-sea fishing as a sport but, 

 surprisingly perhaps, deep-sea fishing as we know it 

 dates only from the turn of the twentieth century. Deep- 

 sea fisherwomen like myself have been few in number, 

 and as recently as 1935 there were no more than a dozen 

 or so in the world. Today, the number runs closer to a 

 thousand; possibly there are even more than that. 

 Women these days are not necessarily more adventurous 

 or more nautical than their grandmothers, but until re- 

 cently only a girl with the build and the strength of a 

 blacksmith could enjoy herself angling on the ocean. 

 The old equipment put all the stress exclusively on mus- 

 cle. 



I think the first tuna ever taken on rod and reel was 

 a 251 -pounder which a man named Colonel Morehouse 

 hooked off Catalina Island near California in 1899. 

 Then fishermen off the Jersey shore hauled in some big 



