Fisheries

Fisheries. From Indian subsistence to global markets, fisheries loom large in American history. Ancient weir sites under Boston Bay and along the Northwest coast and huge bone deposits at The Dalles in Oregon offer evidence that North Americans have fished intensively for more than nine thousand years. European cod fishermen venturing into the northwestern Atlantic in the 1480s soon came ashore in Newfoundland, Acadia, and New England, establishing some of the earliest permanent settlements. By the 1700s, fishers caught Atlantic salmon, lobsters, and cod; indeed, control of the cod fisheries figured in the era's diplomacy and imperials wars.

Evolving technologies have included aboriginal spears, nets, and weirs and European purse seines. The salmon fisheries’ adoption of pound nets and fish wheels in the 1870s and the introduction of the otter trawl net in 1905 increased catches. Early Europeans cured cod by salting the wet fish on shipboard, but by the later 1500s they were drying and salting fish on shore. Canning emerged in the mid‐1800s, freezing late in the century. In the 1940s, giant factory trawlers combined these operations.

The history of fisheries varies by region. In New England, freshwater species began to disappear after 1800 as agriculture, urbanization, and manufacturing altered their habitats, but offshore fishing and whaling remained economic mainstays. In the twentieth century, cod, striped bass, tuna, and marlin were the principal commercial fish, while anglers prized eastern trout and Atlantic salmon. Along the middle and south Atlantic coast, Chesapeake Bay, and the Gulf Coast, crabs, oysters, striped bass, and shrimp were important, with Indians, African slaves, and poor whites the primary laborers. Anglers coveted warm‐water fish such as bass and bonefish.

Fisheries also arose on inland rivers and lakes, including the Mississippi, Illinois, and Nipigon Rivers; the Great Lakes; and Lake Winnipeg, sustaining major industries and communities until habitat destruction undermined them in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Market species included catfish, whitefish, pike, and sturgeon; anglers favored trout and bass. Late twentieth‐century fish culturists created Pacific salmon fisheries, but pollution prevented these stocks from becoming important food sources.

On the West Coast, aboriginal societies caught salmon, eulachon, shellfish, and pinnipeds, while nineteenth‐century Euroamericans pursued Pacific salmon, fur seals, and whales. Commercial fishers in Alaska formed communities that often preceded formal government. Indians, although important laborers initially, had by 1900 been displaced by southern Europeans, Scandinavians, and Asians. In the twentieth century, offshore fleets depleted salmon, halibut, whale, sardine, crab, pollack, and groundfish stocks. Anglers, meanwhile, fished for trout, stocked exotic species, and fought to control salmon and steelhead streams.

Fishery management and regulation were initially local perogatives. In the Colonial Era, towns such as Concord, Massachusetts, set rules and sanctioned monopolies to conserve shad. State fish commissions did not appear until the 1860s. When the first federal fish commissioner tried in 1871 to resolve a conflict in New England over declining scup stocks, the states were ill‐equipped to deal with the issue and the commissioner gave up. Only in Alaska, or when negotiating fishing treaties with Indians and other nations, did federal officials play a primary role, and even here states often contested their power. To avoid regulations, Americans relied on technical solutions such as hatcheries and fishways. When regulations proved unavoidable, they typically fell most heavily on the more marginal members of society.
See also Exploration, Conquest, and Settlement, Era of European; Indian History and Culture; Work.

Bibliography

Harold A. Innis , The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy, rev. ed., 1954.
Joseph E. Taylor III , Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis, 1999.

Joseph E. Taylor III