Bunker fishing boats used a type of seine net known as a purse net, because of the way it gathered around the fish it was used to catch. In this image, the net is nearly "pursed up" or gathered, to be packed up by the steam powered bunker fishing boat. Bruce Collins notes that the fishermen shown in this picture are almost all from Tangier Island, Virginia. Smith Meal Company, the last of the fish factories at Promised Land, hired many of their employees from coastal Virginia and the Carolinas. In his History Project, Inc. oral history, Bruce Collins told interviewer Tony Prohaska that he piloted the steamer Shinnecock out of Amagansett for Jack Edwards from 1954 until 1960. That date is used to estimate the date for these images.