Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- I The miner's canary
- II Sun, wind, and sail, 1850–1910
- III The industrial frontier, 1910–1950
- IV Enclosure of the ocean, 1950–1980
- 8 Gridlock
- 9 Something of a vacuum
- 10 Leaving fish in the ocean
- Conclusion
- Appendixes
- Notes
- Selected bibliography
- Index
9 - Something of a vacuum
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- I The miner's canary
- II Sun, wind, and sail, 1850–1910
- III The industrial frontier, 1910–1950
- IV Enclosure of the ocean, 1950–1980
- 8 Gridlock
- 9 Something of a vacuum
- 10 Leaving fish in the ocean
- Conclusion
- Appendixes
- Notes
- Selected bibliography
- Index
Summary
Perhaps it is necessary as an additional step in the initiation of major fishery regulations of a conservation nature not only simply to [be] correct and understand what you are doing, but for most of the industry people [to go broke] first so that they also understand what you are doing. … [C]ertainly there was [in the past] no disposition to regulate until people went broke on a large scale. It is a horrifying thought but it may be a social factor that requires to be taken into account.
– Wilbert McLeod Chapman (1968)California's domestic fisheries continued to decline through most of the 1960s. “‘Cannery Row’ is no more,” announced the CalCOFI report for 1963. Through the 1950s, the fishery for Pacific mackerel had absorbed much of the effort displaced by the sardine failure; after 1963 this resource failed to reproduce successfully for several years in a row and by 1965, as fishing continued, it, too, collapsed in its turn. With both the sardine and the mackerel now gone, CalCOFI reported, the California “wetfish” fleet became “extremely depressed.” Inland ports in the Sacramento area landed their last commercial salmon harvests in 1959. Although coastal salmon ports continued to do well through the 1960s, they did so largely on the strength of increased harvests of coho salmon, which migrate into central California waters but do not spawn in the Central Valley watershed. Yields of the more valuable chinook variety fell back to the low levels of the 1930s. This time, pollution and the accumulated loss of spawning habitat played a relatively larger role with respect to climate in depressing the fishery than they had in the earlier period.
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- Information
- The Fisherman's ProblemEcology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850–1980, pp. 207 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986