Fishing is the activity of catching fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. All the practical method for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping.The term fishing can be applied to catching other aquatic animals such as shellfish, cephalopods, crustaceans, as well as echinoderms. The term is not under normal conditions applied to catching aquatic mammals such as whales, where the term whaling is more appropriate, or to farmed fish.

According to the statistics, the total number of fishermen as well as fish farmers is estimated to be 38 million. Fisheries provide direct and indirect employment to an estimated 300 million people. In last few years, the worldwide per capita the process of taking food into the body through the mouth of fish captured from wild fisheries was 14.4 kilograms, with an additional 7.4 kilograms harvested from fish farms.

Fishing is an ancient practice which dates back at least to the early period which began about 30,000 years ago. The branch of anthropology that studies prehistoric people and their cultures features such as shell middens, discarded fish bones as well as cave paintings show that sea foods were important for survival and consumed in significant quantities.