The Oyster Book

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.