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what appeared limitless plenty: the
RISE AND FALL
OF THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ATLANTIC HALIBUT FISHERY
GLENN M. GRASSO
ABSTRACT
The destruction of the nineteenth-century Atlantic halibut fishery occurred in the space of a few decades and without industrial fishing methods. Between the 1840s and the 1880s, halibut moved from by-catch to marketable product. This change from negative commodification to positive commodification resulted from increased immigration, technological advances, changing consumer tastes, and halibut's natural history. Once almost infinitely abundant, commercial value and growing markets led to enthusiastic fishing efforts mid-nineteenth century. Market demand influenced both human behaviors and ecosystems. A series of localized depletions became the commercial extinction of halibut in the northwest Atlantic. The nineteenth-century Atlantic halibut fishery demonstrates how species once considered by-catch can be pushed to commercial extinction.
| THE RISE AND FALL of the Atlantic halibut fishery occurred in the span of a few decades. Lorenzo Sabine's 1853 Report on the Principal Fisheries of the American Seas called New England's halibut industry a "new enterprise" and devoted a single page of the 317-page work to it. By the 1880s, George Brown Goode's definitive, multi-volume The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States could speak only retrospectively of the fishery. For most of American history, consumers and fishermen considered halibut a worthless by-catch: undesirable if not outright unpalatable. Yet somehow, this enormous flatfish about which no one cared was driven to near-extinction by two generations of hook-and-line fishermen.1 |
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The meteoric rise and precipitous fall of the Atlantic halibut fishery illustrates the environmental consequences of commodifying nature. A story at the intersection of labor, markets, and ecology, the tale of the Atlantic halibut fishery's collapse is a haunting precursor to the twentieth-century cod fishery's crash and offers an illuminating contrast to the relatively successful management of Pacific halibut. Whether highlighting successes or failures, marine environmental historians are realizing the potential of such stories for helping to understand humans' role in refashioning the ocean environment.2 |
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At first glance, the nineteenth-century Atlantic halibut fishery fit the typical pattern of fisheries collapse. It followed predictable boom-and-bust cycles of commercial potential, enthusiastic fishing, resource strain, declining productivity, efforts to sustain catches and profits, and ultimately, collapse. Yet, unlike many other species, halibut was disdained by fishermen and consumers. For centuries, halibut lacked commercial value despite its abundance almost everywhere in the northwest Atlantic Ocean. An early lack of value, however, did not prevent fishermen from removing halibut from the water. Three pernicious practices that foreshadowed routine twentieth-century fishing habits were associated with halibut very early: discarding, by-catch, and high-grading. At different periods throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, fishermen discarded halibut as worthless or rejected it as by-catch. Then, between 1840 and 1880, predictable factors and unexpected events converged to elevate halibut to a desirable commodity. Fish dealers imposed a selection process, however, high-grading some halibut while marginalizing most of the catch although it had already been landed. These deleterious practices came to define the fishery—and to push halibut stocks to the brink of commercial extinction. |
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