Scaling Fisheries: The Science of Measuring the Effects of Fishing, 1855–1955

Cambridge Studies in Applied Ecology and Resource Management

by Tim D. Smith

Since the industrialization of fishing, fisheries scientists have been subject to intense economic and political pressures, which have affected the way the science has developed. The origins and effects of these pressures are traced in this book to concerns about determining the causes of fluctuations in fish and whale catches, and to resistance to regulation of fishing activity when populations are depleted. The development of partial theories of fish population dynamics are described using examples of both national and international fisheries. The causes of the difficulties encountered in generalizing these theories are examined, setting the stage for the limitation of scope of these studies that still influences the form and extent of fisheries research today.

412 pages, Hardcover

First published July 21, 1994

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the first books to give a comprehensive look at the development of fisheries science. Still invaluable, though the perspective of the past 30 years has changed things.

[CL Chu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fish and things. Good internalist history.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a superb history of the origin and development of analytical fisheries science, and also an insightful history into sequential overfishing. Tim Smith was a scientist at Woods Hole and sat on the International Whaling Commission before his retirement, so he knows this ground well. He is also an articulate speaker, a skilled writer adept at explaining scientific and mathematical concepts simply and clearly, and sensitive to the historical contingencies that over time shaped fisheries science as we know it today. It goes from the crises in Europe and the US over declining fish stocks in the mid-1800s and the creation of scientific agencies to study the problem, to the creation of what could be called a unified fisheries theory by Beverton and Holt in 1957. SCALING FISHERIES was published in 1993, just after the collapse of Newfoundland cod, the Waterloo of fisheries management. It clearly shows that again and again, scientists and fishermen knew that fish stocks were in trouble, and that overfishing was occurring. Cessation of fishing during WWI and WWII showed people could catch more fish after a fishing moratorium, and the fact that greater yield was possible after fishing effort decreased was eventually proved. Yet vested economic interests blocked regulation again and again by demanding higher and higher levels of scientific certainty. Effective regulation was stalled for over 100 years, until the fish that once gathered in coastal oceans are almost all gone. This book was the important forerunner to Daniel Pauly's Shifting Baselines concept. Anyone who wants to look can see the same obstructive process at work today.