The Unnatural History of the SeaIsland Press, 2009 M01 5 - 454 pages Humanity can make short work of the oceans’ creatures. In 1741, hungry explorers discovered herds of Steller’s sea cow in the Bering Strait, and in less than thirty years, the amiable beast had been harpooned into extinction. It’s a classic story, but a key fact is often omitted. Bering Island was the last redoubt of a species that had been decimated by hunting and habitat loss years before the explorers set sail. As Callum M. Roberts reveals in The Unnatural History of the Sea, the oceans’ bounty didn’t disappear overnight. While today’s fishing industry is ruthlessly efficient, intense exploitation began not in the modern era, or even with the dawn of industrialization, but in the eleventh century in medieval Europe. Roberts explores this long and colorful history of commercial fishing, taking readers around the world and through the centuries to witness the transformation of the seas. Drawing on firsthand accounts of early explorers, pirates, merchants, fishers, and travelers, the book recreates the oceans of the past: waters teeming with whales, sea lions, sea otters, turtles, and giant fish. The abundance of marine life described by fifteenth century seafarers is almost unimaginable today, but Roberts both brings it alive and artfully traces its depletion. Collapsing fisheries, he shows, are simply the latest chapter in a long history of unfettered commercialization of the seas. The story does not end with an empty ocean. Instead, Roberts describes how we might restore the splendor and prosperity of the seas through smarter management of our resources and some simple restraint. From the coasts of Florida to New Zealand, marine reserves have fostered spectacular recovery of plants and animals to levels not seen in a century. They prove that history need not repeat itself: we can leave the oceans richer than we found them. |
Contents
Preface | |
Explorers and Exploiters in the Age of Plenty | |
The End of Innocence | |
The Origins of Intensive Fishing | |
Newfound Lands | |
More Fish than Water | |
Plunder of the Caribbean | |
The Age of Merchant Adventurers | |
The Downfall of King | |
Slow Death of an Estuary Chesapeake | |
The Collapse of Coral | |
Shifting Baselines | |
Ghost Habitats | |
Hunting on the High Plains of the Open | |
Violating the Last Great Wilderness | |
The Once and Future Ocean | |
WhalingThe First Global Industry | |
To the Ends of the Earth for Seals | |
The Great Fisheries of Europe | |
The First Trawling Revolution | |
The Dawn of Industrial Fishing | |
The Modern Era of Industrial Fishing | |
The Inexhaustible | |
The Legacy of Whaling | |
Emptying European Seas | |
Other editions - View all
The Unnatural History of the Sea: The Past and the Future of Man, Fisheries ... Callum Roberts No preview available - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
abalone abundance animals areas Atlantic banks Bering boats bottom bottom trawling bycatch California Captain Caribbean catch caught Chesapeake Chesapeake Bay coast coastal collapse commercial coral Dampier decline deep deep-sea depleted diving early England estuaries Europe European exploitation feet fish populations fish stocks fisheries management fleet fur seals gear giant groupers Gulf of California Gulf of Maine habitats haddock Hakluyt Society harpoon hooks hundred hunting Ibid Iceland industry Island kelp forests killed killer whales kilograms kilometers land live London longlines marine reserves meters miles nets nineteenth century North America North Sea northern numbers ocean offshore orange roughy overfishing oysters Pacific percent places plankton predators protection reefs rivers rockfish sailing scientists Sea Fisheries sea otters seabed seamounts seaweed shallow sharks ships shoals shore spawning species square kilometers Steller sustainable swordfish target thousand tonnes totoaba trade trawlers tuna turtles twentieth century vessels Voyage walrus wildlife