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A salting and fish sauce industry cannot exist without non-stop fishing activity to provide the necessary primary material.

Although the sea is a basic part of the Mediterranean villages’ resources, it does not produce over abundant fruits. There are numerous species, but they are never abundantly represented. The only exception to the rule is made up of the Scombridae (tuna, mackeral), which because they are seasonal determine an economic and social characteristic of the Mediterranean coastal populations, where the fisherman is often also an expert farmer.

Tuna and other associated species on their seasonal journeys only pass twice a year through the same area. Fishing for them is an activity which temporarily requires a high amount of labour. Between May and June they go along the side of the Moroccan and Iberian peninsular Atlantic coasts, entering the Mediterranean to lay eggs, returning by the same route to the Atlantic in June and August.

The arts of fishing go from the simple hook and bait, to fishing lines or trawling which bring together a number of hooks and which are documented in antiquity in connection with the small-scale coastal fishing. To fish the Scombridae, the art of fencing it in was used, such as with tuna nets. Dragnets, handled from boats or the shore, were also traditionally uses on the Mazarrón coast to capture smaller species such as sardines or mullet.

For the maintenance and resistance of the nets, and to make them last, they were periodically put in baths of dye with red ochre, a product which gave them consistency and delayed their deterioration.

The fishing industry is closely linked to the esparto grass industry, which supplied the prime material for making the ropes and nets, an activity which in the modern period the Mazarrón coast specialized, supplying products and labour to a good part of the Mediterranean.