Mosquito Nets & Fishing Nets

Be the first in your club to combine Mosquito Nets & Fishing Nets for a timely exhibit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/w...fishing.html

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Hi Ikey, The true inventors of netting, and threads for that matter, deserve a place of honor here. So I'm putting a spider on the web for a starter. Nephila senegalensis is a master of her trade and has surely caught many a mosquito. The Genus lives in tropical forests the world over and creates webs of considerable size which are not as regular as those of smaller spiders (compare photos). These large spiders are able to catch small birds!

Brilliant!

Hi Ikey, Yes, I also think that the brilliance of Nature will always be something we can look up to. In the meantime I read your linked information and was sad to see that yet again an ecosystem is being destroyed - how can we help the people avoid doing that? They would in bygone days never have considered destroying their own basis of existence.
My contribution now is on the world scale: the International Trade Fair on fishing and fish products held in Vigo Spain, 1997. Nets and floats.

Actually, my 'Brilliant!' was aimed at your post, not the insects ;)




The idea that we ever possessed such communal-level wisdom is read into the outcome, eg, some culture or community never grew large enough to threaten its environment, so we now conclude that they meant things to turn-out that way.

For a first approximation, I cannot think of a single example of a culture or community that effectively restrained itself from hunting or fishing a key species to extinction, or exhausting land or another resource ... and moving on.

'The Tragedy of the Commons' describes the mechanism.

A zillion years ago, in an economic development seminar at university, a fellow student explained that the reason African herders had so many goats, and so few cows, was that they understood the vastly higher environmental impact of cows and, therefor, configured their herds in the way that was in tune with Mother Earth.

As I was returning to university after a short stint working in economic development, I had an unfair advantage (experience) and offered that anyone in Africa who began with equal herds of goats & cattle would, in short order, have many more goats than cattle, no matter how hard they tried to maintain herd equality, because goats are so much hardier, and so much easier to raise, and so much less enjoyable to eat than cattle. Duh.

I am deeply suspicious of the school of thought that, at an earlier stage of human society, there were environmentally-aware matriarchal societies that ever-so-gently roamed the earth. My thought is that we did less damage when we were not able to do much damage and, as we accumulated tools etc, we did more damage as we were able to do more damage.

All that having been said, I like your stamps.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Hi Ikey, Happy to get some praise. If one thinks all that you have said through to the end, it gets pretty depressing, but I have no counter-argument. Awareness, and acting upon that awareness, will always remain on an individual level, but I can recommend you look up the name Felix Finkbeiner and his initiative "Plant for the Planet". There's a role model!
The next net comes from Canada, 1951; surely there are more Canadians, but I don't have any. And I don't have a single mosquito net, there must be some out there. Where are your nets?

Kris, Greetings:

Although I have been quick to scold others for finding things for other people to do with other people's time and other people's money, I chose to exempt myself from my own very good rule on the very thin ground that mosquito net fishing is a) a new & non-obvious topic, and b) I happened to have a link to a relevant newspaper article.

I, myself, came of age at a time when topicals were not considered Serious Philately by those (myself included) who were counting perfs & measuring margins & grieving over hinge remains.

Since then, I've come to think of topicals as Serious Fun and, even though I do not indulge, I welcomed this opportunity to contribute a new topic for the benefit of those who do.

So, sorry, no netsy stamps to post, but you'd best believe that I've added them to my BOLO (Be On the Look Out) list.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Hello Ikey, Here's hoping that you'll find some in your albums. I too started collecting when topicals were frowned upon, but that never deterred me. The subject matter, and that's what stamps are all about, was always more interesting to me.

The Gambia is a tiny country lining the Gambie River and surrounded by Senegal. It is heavily dependent upon fishing to provide protein for nourishment and suffers from the overfishing of coastal waters by trawlers run by the wealTheir nations. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (logo) draws attention to such conditions. 50th anniversary.

Kris, Greetings:

I like the way you match your stamps w/ topical photographs.

Q/ Is that only digital, or do you print & mount the photos, too?

TPFKAMI (The Person Formerly Known As Mrs ikeyPikey) had a few glass bulbs that she had picked-up along the way. The bulbs were used to float one edge of hand-fishing nets. If I had a few net fishing stamps, and I had not thoughtfully forwarded those bulbs to her next address, I could see crushing them to a fine powder, so they would lay flat in plastic sleeves in a stamp album.

Another fine opportunity lost to my hiatus from stamp collecting. What lesson shall we learn?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Hello Ikey, Fishermen along Africa's coasts can no longer make a living plying their trade, and this also holds true of the fishermen along the coasts of Europe. Many fishing villages are now almost ghosts towns. When I lived in Hamburg back in the 60s, one could go down to the quayside and buy fish directly from the small trawlers.
Belgium has issued several wonderful blocks of stamps, usually designed by a well known artist, here René Hausman (2006). Only two fishermen in the small boat are pulling up the net. In answer to your question about putting together an exhibit: yes, I add whatever fits well to the stamps, pictures of course but also objects (however I certainly wouldn't crush anything to make it fit into a plastic sleeve).

Hi Ikey, haven't seen you in a while.
Fishing with nets at the beach was also done in northern countries but is now a bygone practice. One could buy herring right at the beach at times when large schools migrated along the coast.

Haven't found anything new on this topic to post, but, as long as you brought-up herring ...

The book 'Salt' - one of those popular history books that tells a really interesting story about something you did not know was all that interesting - has whole chapters on Northern Europeans trading herring (which they caught in abundance in the cold northern waters) for salt (which was more easily mined, via evaporation pools, in the warm southern waters) ... and which everyone they needed to preserve the herring. The southerners had this church that required they go meatless several days per month ...

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Here's another shore Fisher preparing to throw his net. The are usually circular and have weights at the circumference; it takes lots of practice to get the right swing to them.

Niger 2013 Anti-malaria campaign.

Hi Tants, That is a wonderful Red Cross/Niger stamp!
Here's another one with coastal throw-net fishing.

Sometimes a net is used to build a bridge



Samoa - 2005