Something New Under the Sun by J. R. McNeill
Author:J. R. McNeill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2000-05-05T16:00:00+00:00
TABLE 8.1 GLOBAL FISH CATCH, 1800–1996
The aggregate figures conceal a persistent pattern. Numerous important fisheries collapsed in the twentieth century, generally the most valuable ones. The catch of the 1980s and 1990s included great shares of previously uneconomic fish (“trash fish”) sought out because cod, herring, haddock, and tuna, among others, became harder to find.
Local fishery collapses are nothing new. Regulations designed to prevent overfishing appeared in the thirteenth century and perhaps earlier. France and Britain attempted an international agreement to curtail fishing in 1839, presumably in response to declining yields.35 But larger collapses awaited the twentieth century, with the power of its markets, or planned production quotas, and technologies. North Sea fisheries and the Maine lobster fishery collapsed in the 1920s. The Japanese pilchard fishery, the world’s largest in the 1930s, collapsed in 1946–1949, recovered exuberantly in the mid-1970s,36 and crashed again in 1994. The California sardine fishery, immortalized in literature by John Steinbeck in the 1930s, declined sharply after 1945 and died out in 1968. In that same year the Atlanto-Scandian herring fishery collapsed. So did the northeastern Atlantic cod. Sometimes populations recovered only to crash again, as with Japanese pilchard. Sometimes there was (as yet) no recovery, as with California sardines or North Atlantic cod.37 Wherever modern fishing methods were applied, sooner or later high fishing pressure, combined with a natural downturn in fish stocks, led to a crash. The North Atlantic, lately the world’s second leading fishery, saw this happen early and often in the twentieth century.38
On the world’s richest fishing grounds, it happened only once. In the mid-1950s, out-of-work fishermen and boats, veterans of the dying sardine fishery, headed south from California to Peru and set up shop in the Humboldt Current. There cold, oxygen-rich water supports phytoplankton in profusion, which in turn supports shoals of anchoveta and Chilean jack mackerel. Peruvians had fished these waters for centuries, but not with power boats, big nets, and airplanes to find the fish. By 1962, Peru landed more fish tonnage than any country in the world, nearly 7 million tons. The fishery peaked between 1967 and 1971 at 10 to 12 million tons, 20 percent of the world’s total. Anchoveta, converted into fish meal and fish oil, anchored Peru’s foreign trade, providing a third of its foreign exchange. In 1972 the bottom fell out: 4.7 million tons, then 2 to 4 million tons per year for 15 years. The anchoveta collapse lowered world fish production by about 15 percent. This disaster hamstrung Peru’s economy, contributing to the turbulent politics of the 1970s and 1980s, which featured relentless inflation, mass unemployment, and the emergence of violent revolutionary groups.
The collapse coincided with an El Niño in 1972, and the absolute nadir of the catch (1.5 million tons) came with a strong El Niño in 1982–1983. These periodic short-lived fluctuations in Pacific currents, which bring warmer, nutrient-poor water to the Peruvian coast, clearly had a role in sinking the anchoveta fishery. But overfishing had a hand in it too, and slowed recovery after El Niño conditions abated.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Anatomy | Animals |
Bacteriology | Biochemistry |
Bioelectricity | Bioinformatics |
Biology | Biophysics |
Biotechnology | Botany |
Ecology | Genetics |
Paleontology | Plants |
Taxonomic Classification | Zoology |
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari(13961)
The Tidewater Tales by John Barth(12383)
Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova(6918)
Do No Harm Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh(6675)
The Thirst by Nesbo Jo(6425)
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker(6331)
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Tegmark Max(5169)
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari(5111)
The Longevity Diet by Valter Longo(4850)
The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson(4566)
The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy(4508)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot(4239)
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker(4188)
Animal Frequency by Melissa Alvarez(4143)
Yoga Anatomy by Kaminoff Leslie(4096)
The Hacking of the American Mind by Robert H. Lustig(4071)
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot(3972)
Barron's AP Biology by Goldberg M.S. Deborah T(3938)
Double Down (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 11) by Jeff Kinney(3909)
