Generations of nocturnal fishermen have lured their catch with fire.

Atlas Obscura
Date: July 31, 2018
By: Leslie Nguyen-Okwu

The fisherman are ready with their nets as the sardines leap towards the fire. ALL PHOTOS: JOE RUSSO

It’s pitch black on Taiwan’s waters, and in a few minutes, all hell will break loose. A boom and blaze of fire explode into the night sky, followed by the sour stench of sulphur. Thousands of tiny, ray-finned sardines suddenly leap out of the Pacific Ocean—in a wild, graceless dance—hurling themselves towards the scorching flames. Meanwhile, fishermen work feverishly to scoop them up, before they plunge back into the sea. The scene is utter chaos.

Traditional sulphuric fire fishing is a century-plus-old practice found only in Jinshan, a sleepy little port city near the northern tip of Taiwan. Fishermen use a bamboo torch and soft sulphuric rocks to ignite a fire fierce enough to drive hordes of silver-scaled sardines to the water’s surface. And the golden hour for making fish fly? Set sail during a “moonless night,” when the sun has long dipped below the horizon and the fish are starving for light, says 71-year-old Ketong Lee, a boat captain who’s been fire fishing for more than half a century.

From left: a fisherman on board; one of the many sulphur canisters on the boat.
From left: a fisherman on board; one of the many sulphur canisters on the boat.
Sulphur is one of Jinshan’s most abundant natural resources, found everywhere from the village’s rocky golden cliffs to the murky-colored hot springs. Each fire-fishing boat carries a metal cauldron full of these dusty sulphuric rocks, which produce flammable gas that is fed into a long, skinny bamboo rod affixed to the boat’s rear. In a process known poetically as “phototaxis,” the fire’s blinding brightness “attracts the fish so fervently that they leap out of the water towards the smoldering light,” says Yushan Han, a professor at the National Taiwan University Institute of Fisheries Science.
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