Sport fishermen first encountered blue marlin in the Bahamas in the 1920s and early 1930s, when pioneering big-game fishermen such as Van Campen Heilner and S. Kip Farrington began exploring the waters offshore of Bimini and Cat Cay. Since then, blue marlin have been renowned as one of the world's greatest game fishes. The sportfishing pursuit of marlin and other billfish has developed into a multimillion dollar industry that includes hundreds of companies and thousands of jobs for boat operators, boat builders, marinas, dealerships, and fishing tackle manufacturers and dealers.