Meaning & use
fishery
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Meanings
nouncountable
The business of catching fish or other seafood in a particular area or of a particular kind, or the area where it is done.
Grammar: Has a plural, fisheries; often named by species or place: the cod fishery.
Patterns
- the fishery for something
- a fishery in/off somewhere
The cod fishery collapsed after decades of overfishing.
Many families on the island depend on the lobster fishery.
Scientists monitor the fishery to keep catches at a safe level.
nouncountable
A place where fish are raised or hatched, usually for release or sale.
Grammar: Often used for a hatchery or fish farm.
The state runs a fishery that raises young trout for local rivers.
We visited a fishery where visitors could feed the salmon.
The new fishery produces thousands of fish each season.
Word forms
| plural | fisheries |
|---|
Common combinations
- commercial fishery
- The commercial fishery employs thousands of workers.
- sustainable fishery
- A sustainable fishery protects fish stocks for the future.
- fishery management
- Fishery management sets limits on how much can be caught.
- collapse of the fishery
- The collapse of the fishery devastated the town.
- wild fishery
- The wild fishery for salmon is strictly regulated.
Synonyms and how they differ
- fishing industry
- Fishing industry describes the whole sector, while fishery usually names one species or one area.
- hatchery
- A hatchery only breeds and raises young fish, whereas a fishery can cover catching them too.
- fish farm
- A fish farm raises fish in enclosures, while a fishery may involve wild catches.
Word family
Commonly confused: fishery or fisher?
fishery vs fisher
A fisher is a person who fishes, and a fishery is the business or the place, not the person.
Practice
Strict quotas were introduced to protect the North Sea cod ____ from collapse.
Choose one answer.
A fishery is the organized catching of a species in an area, which quotas protect. A fisher is a person and cannot collapse in this sense.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “fishery”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.