Mortal Sea : Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail (9780674070462) by Bolster W. Jeffrey

Author:Bolster, W. Jeffrey [Bolster, W. Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

CLOSE TIME FOR MACKEREL?

Common wisdom during the nineteenth century was that mackerel’s abundance “varied greatly from year to year.” Sometimes, as one expert put it, “their numbers have been so few that grave apprehensions have been felt lest they should soon depart altogether.” By contrast cod seemed phlegmatic, and cod fishing relatively dependable. Bumper years in the mackerel fleet could be followed by lean ones, making planning difficult for both business interests and individual fishermen. “The highest stock I ever made in the Gulf of St. Lawrence mackereling was $7000.00,” testified Captain Peter Sinclair, who had fished for decades. That was 1859. “My poorest year I stocked $150, gone six weeks. This was in 1860.” Boats that shifted to mackerel from the more predictable cod fishery sometimes could not even pay for their season’s outfit. As the century progressed, arguments raged about whether fluctuations in mackerel and menhaden landings could be attributed to fishing pressure or to “natural causes, such as temperature, currents, the presence or absence of food, and the like, over which man has little or no control,” as fisheries biologist R. E. Earll put it in 1887. No one considered the synergistic impact of human pressure and natural downturns, much less the notion that ecology, economic production, and law were inextricably intertwined. Fluctuations in the coastal marine ecosystem did not sit well with a laissez-faire economic system that assumed ever-expanding productivity, and a supposedly stable nature.29

The mackerel fleet’s catching power expanded dramatically during the fifteen years after the Civil War, putting more pressure on stocks. Progressive mackerel fishers adopted purse seines during the 1850s, and seining began to account for a larger percentage of the annual catch. As late as the 1870s a handful of holdouts—especially from poorer communities in Maine—stuck with the less expensive jigs. For the most part, however, purse seines had become almost universal by then, and net-builders had improved them significantly. During the 1860s engineers had developed the first knitting machines for nets. No longer would they be assembled by hand, mesh by mesh. By the mid-1870s the largest seines were 1,350 feet long and 150 feet deep, enormous compared with those of 1850. Glass floats on the headropes had largely been replaced by corks—hundreds of them, and some quite large. Rings for the cinching line on the footrope had been replaced on the most sophisticated nets with galvanized blocks (pulleys), through which ropes ran with less friction. The bunt of the net, which took most of the strain, was knitted from the stoutest twine, while the wings and sides were lighter to save weight. Innovators secured numerous patents for improved gear during the 1870s and 1880s. Fishing reflected New Englanders’ mechanical genius and can-do spirit as much as any other industry. Seine boats grew larger to accommodate the ever-growing seines. In 1857 all seine boats in New England had been twenty-eight feet long, modeled on whaleboats. By 1872 the standard was thirty feet; by 1873 boat shops had lengthened them to thirty-one feet.

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