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36 votes
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Why would a rural village need rope in times of famine?

Rope is super useful for many things, at many technology levels, relating to procuring and preserving food: Snare Traps rely on ropes for the snares Fishing, either with nets or with a rod, will ...
PipperChip's user avatar
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19 votes
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Explorers living off the sea

Fishing is incompatible with making maximum headway, for a start -- to fish (the way fishing boats do, in pursuit of profit) you would put out nets with floats, then draw the nets closed, and lift ...
Zeiss Ikon's user avatar
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15 votes
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Fishing from underwater domes

They need to be able to breathe, so an airlock leading into a section of ocean wouldn't be useful Well, not so much. Freediving is very much a thing, after all, and has been for quite a considerable ...
Starfish Prime's user avatar
15 votes
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How does the kraken get its bait?

Stuff it ate earlier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14wWxaMR2Mg Here an orca has regurgitated a fish for use in baiting birds. I watched one do this probably at this exact spot. In my video, when ...
Willk's user avatar
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14 votes

The effect of fishing on total land area needed to feed an island settlement

I grew up on an island, me, and one which both grew a fair amount of fresh veg and on which fishing was a primary concern. You've missed several important elements in this discussion: One: not only ...
GerardFalla's user avatar
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12 votes

Explorers living off the sea

I don't know a specific answer, but I do know a place to start digging. Look hard at some of the Polynesian peoples and the Maori and such. Take a hard look at places like Easter Island and who lived ...
Paul TIKI's user avatar
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11 votes

Explorers living off the sea

The book Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl may be interesting to you. It follows the real events of Heyerdahl and his team of researchers crossing open ocean in an extremely low tech balsa wood raft. The ...
Kaleb Jacobsen's user avatar
11 votes

How to catch giant sea creatures?

"You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat" Using the wise words of Brody "You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat". You can't use anything too destructive or lethal to kill and collect your giant leviathans because ...
user2389345436357's user avatar
11 votes

Fishing from underwater domes

Underwater domes will probably be located deep in the oceans. If you are under one of the major oceanic currents, then all you need is some dynamite. Find a school of fish far enough from home for a ...
The Square-Cube Law's user avatar
9 votes

Fishing from underwater domes

Fish traps are a convenient way to catch fishes and other sea creatures. A fish trap is a trap used for fishing. Fish traps can have the form of a fishing weir or a lobster trap. A typical ...
L.Dutch's user avatar
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9 votes

Explorers living off the sea

Alain Bombard This man, according to Wikipedia, "was a French biologist, physician and politician famous for sailing in a small boat across the Atlantic Ocean without provision. He theorized ...
Redbud201's user avatar
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8 votes

How would air-nomads catch food in the sky?

Air farms. These would be zeppelins, green and festooned with vines. Each would be run by an air nomad family that would tend the crops and chase the rain. Air farms would move south and north with ...
Willk's user avatar
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7 votes

How do you pronounce Micropterus?

There are lots of pronunciation videos on YouTube, like this one, and lots of dictionary pages will speak the word aloud if you click the little icon of a speaker next to the word, like on this page: ...
Thom Blair III's user avatar
7 votes

Fishing from underwater domes

Depending on the level of scientific realism you want, it should be possible to enable rod and reel "sport" type fishing activity from your underwater dome (even if the dome itself is kept at surface ...
Zeiss Ikon's user avatar
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7 votes

Where can I learn more about 1700 era boating?

Use Moby-Dick There was an American author, Herman Melville, who, sometime around the middle of the 19th century, wrote a thousand pages book about whaling. While this is 1850 instead of 1750, the ...
AlexP's user avatar
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7 votes

Why would a rural village need rope in times of famine?

Make fiber. Your spinner does not just make rope. She makes fibers. The ladies of the village use the fiber to make new clothes and clothes for their babies. The men use the fiber to make rope to ...
Willk's user avatar
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6 votes

The effect of fishing on total land area needed to feed an island settlement

I think your question should be broken up into 3 questions. However I am posting this elaboration as an answer because I will show you how to calculate what you want from the answer to the 3 following ...
Tyler S. Loeper's user avatar
6 votes

Explorers living off the sea

While fishing can supplement their diet, historically they had to carry both food and water. Fishing was too undependable. Water is usually more limiting. it is bulky and heavy. Large wooden barrels ...
James Cook's user avatar
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6 votes

Why would a rural village need rope in times of famine?

A village in a forest has many different foods available. A forest has many different types of food that can be collected including foods that normally would not be eaten but would be eaten in times ...
David R's user avatar
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5 votes

Is there a culture where traditionally women fish?

Women were involved in fishing in a few Tasmanian Aboriginal communities and referenced here as well, but I don't know if they where the main fisherpeople. But they where the predominant divers for ...
Nyra's user avatar
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5 votes

How to catch giant sea creatures?

Forget boats - use helicopters. Or whatever the high-tech equivalent is in your universe. Read up on submarine-killer helicopters, and adapt some of their techniques to finding and killing your ...
DrBob's user avatar
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5 votes

How did fishermen fish from caravels or cogs?

From memory there are three techniques you use from sail boats, pre-Brixham Trawler. Seine nets which can be set by wading, by small fishing boats with an attendant rowboat, or by a number of small ...
Ash's user avatar
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4 votes

Why would a rural village need rope in times of famine?

You need a rope to access water in deep wells with buckets. Every little hamlet needs it and larger towns away from rivers have many wells. Wet well rope rots, so it has to be replaced regularly. ...
ohwilleke's user avatar
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4 votes

What do you call fishing on a planet where there are no fish?

I don't really think that this is a worldbuilding issue, but rather a question of language use in fictitious writing. To this, my answer would be: You write your story in English – so why don't you ...
Schmuddi's user avatar
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3 votes

How would you go about seeding oceans of Europa with adapted Earth life?

The Earth has some excellent examples of ecosystems that thrive on the underside of sea-ice in the polar regions. Convection in the Europan ocean could conceivably bring nutrients up to the base of ...
Arkenstein XII's user avatar
3 votes

Is there a culture where traditionally women fish?

Fish while Knitting. In many pre-industrial societies, one of the main activities done by women was making clothes for their family by hand. When you spend hours and hours every day knitting or ...
Daron's user avatar
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3 votes

Why would a rural village need rope in times of famine?

The simplest solution is that the village can trade the rope with a client who needs large amounts of rope. The village itself has no need for rope, it needs food. Your lady is just working like a ...
Kilisi's user avatar
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3 votes

Why would a rural village need rope in times of famine?

They have grain but thier gravity mill is broken. They can make flour by hands but it thake lots of time and effort. Mill works with some counterweights wich are in some kind of rope basket. That ...
Kamitergh's user avatar
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2 votes

How would air-nomads catch food in the sky?

Hunter gatherers tend to deplete the environment fairly quickly. There's a limited amount of food around, and high up in the sky there's even less. They can certainly hunt whatever birds if they want ...
Nepene Nep's user avatar
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2 votes

How would air-nomads catch food in the sky?

The air is a bit of a "food desert", as one commenter said, but not entirely. There are high-flying cranes, eiders, swans, swifts in there. Many birds form flocks specifically to migrate, ...
Humphrey's user avatar
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