The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts

Author:Callum Roberts
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Oyster dredging in the nineteenth century. Dredges were dragged across the seabed to dislodge clumps of oysters from reefs along with many other organisms that were later discarded. Source: Whymper, F. (1-883) The Fisheries of the World. An Illustrated and Descriptive Record of the International Fisheries Exhibition, 1-883. Cassell and Company Ltd., London.

The story of oyster fisheries is an oft-repeated one in the history of human exploitation of natural resources. Where a resource is common property, shared by all, there is a tendency for individuals to take more of that resource than is sustainable. Individuals can obtain a private gain but at a cost to the rest of society by acting selfishly. If everybody exercised restraint, and took only a sustainable share of the resource, everyone would be better off. But restraint seldom occurs without some kind of regulation, whether it be through legal or traditional means. The Maryland police chief, Hunter Davidson, told the State Oyster Commission in 1869 that the fishers were uneducated and daring men reckless of consequences. The industry was "more like a scramble for something adrift, where the object of everyone appears [to be] to get as much as he can before it is lost."5

Davidson was given a boat early in the 1870s to enforce the law and keep the peace. Despite his best efforts, fishers continued dredging for oysters, now doing it illegally by night. Firefights often broke out between police and pirate fishers, killing many in what are known as the "oyster wars" of Chesapeake Bay.6 Sadly, many local people, including their elected officials, believed they had too much to lose from restraint, and by the early decades of the twentieth century, the oyster bonanza was over.

Michael Kirby of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California has reconstructed the rise and spread of oyster fisheries around the United States.? He looked at catch records from twenty-one estuaries spanning east, west, and Gulf of Mexico coasts. Fisheries began close to growing urban centers, spreading away from these estuaries along the coasts as stocks were depleted. With passing time, catches in each estuary peaked rapidly and then fell as beds were exhausted and fishers moved on. Kirby found the same pattern in attempts to stem oyster declines. In the waters around New York, then a Dutch colony, there were signs of trouble as early as the mid-seventeenth century. A proclamation of 1658 states that "the Director General and Council of New Netherland... interdict and forbid all persons from continuing to dig or dredge any Oyster shells on the East River or the North River, between this City and Fresh Water.i8

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