John Resich - Inventor of the spray system

At the beginning of the 20th century, many Komiža residents sought a new life in America. Among them was the Resich family. The father, a fisherman from Komiža, soon gained a reputation among his colleagues and the nickname Fishman, and this nickname stuck to the entire family. His son, John Resich Fishman, grew up in the fishing business and knew all its difficulties well. The biggest problem at that time was landing tuna. In the ship's pools, the fish were kept frozen in large blocks of ice. To get to them, the sailors had to break the ice with axes, maces and chisels - a laborious and dangerous job. John noticed that seawater, when salt was added to it, had a lower freezing point than ordinary water. This gave him an idea: fish could remain frozen, but without forming hard blocks of ice. He installed pumps on his ship that pumped salted seawater from the bottom of the pool. This water then passed through cooling pipes and returned from above, sprayed over the fish. In this way, he created a system in which salt water constantly circulated, maintaining a uniform coldness and freezing the fish, but without creating hard ice masses. Landing was now simple, and handling the fish was incomparably easier. His invention was called the “spray system”, and John Resich Fishman entered the history of fishing as a man who made life easier for generations of fishermen with one innovation.