Encyclopedia of Tidepools and Rocky Shores

UCPB002-3802G-C01_007-030.qxd 11/02/2009 08:45 PM Page 7 Aptara ONE Discovering the Ocean OF FISH AND SHIPS AND PEOPLE A Bountiful Sea? For millennia, the relationship between peo- A New Planet ple and the sea has been determined largely by Discovery of the World Ocean human fondness for seafood. Fishermen had Early Oceanography and the Challenger Expedition the most intimate knowledge of winds and cur- Post-Challenger Expeditions rents and of the changes that come with the sea- Scripps: Evolution of a Marine Research Center sons. Also, of course, they knew where to go to find fish and crabs and oysters. Their prey was found in view of the land. Later on, with bigger Lobster, scallop, and tuna are among the more vessels, fishing moved out into the open ocean expensive items on the seafood menu, and for away from visual contact with the coast. Fisher- good reasons. We like to eat these things, and men discovered new riches: enormous aggrega- there are many of us, and not so many of them tions of cod, schools of herring. In high north- any more. In fact, with regard to fish suitable ern latitudes, whales have long been part of for fine dining, there are now roughly 10 times marine hunting cultures. Not so long ago, in fewer in the sea than only a few decades ago.1 the nineteenth century, whaling was an impor- Many other animals of the sea once or recently tant business in many coastal communities heavily exploited are similarly diminished, throughout the world. In New England, shore including, for example, sea turtles and large whaling off Nantucket and Long Island made a whales. Jellyfish, however, remain in sufficient start around 1690. The business grew into a abundance (fig. 1.1). Their nutritional value, in worldwide enterprise in the early 1800s, cen- relation to weight, is low. Nevertheless, they are tered at New Bedford, where more than 400 already finding their way into seafood restau- whalers were registered at the Custom House rants, thus confirming a long-term trend away in 1857.3 Yankee whalers knew the sea and the from catching highly prized predators such as habits of whales.4 They were the sages of the sea tuna and swordfish, toward netting plankton- well before oceanography emerged as a branch eaters and invertebrates.2 of the Earth sciences. Their knowledge was 7 UCPB002-3802G-C01_007-030.qxd 11/02/2009 08:45 PM Page 8 Aptara FIGURE 1.1. Pelagic jellyfish include some of the largest and most ancient forms of animal life in the sea. closely tied to purpose, a link that has largely A BOUNTIFUL SEA? persisted into modern ocean sciences. The main lesson of the story of whale hunting, often The lesson learned from whaling—that the retold, is that the sea’s resources are not inex- ocean’s resources are large but limited—has haustible, and that overexploitation will not recently emerged again with respect to many engender restraint but will stop only after col- other prey items that once yielded millions of lapse of the resource or from outside interven- tons of food, such as herring and cod (fig. 1.2). tion (in this case, the discovery of petroleum). The collapse of these fisheries in the North As we have learned more about the ocean, Atlantic was not entirely unexpected. Warnings motivated by the needs of fisheries, navies, and were sounded back in the early twentieth cen- shipping, and also by curiosity, a new planet has tury.5 But optimism prevailed. As recently as entered our awareness, one where the ocean is 1967, the American fishery scientist W.M. Chap- the dominating feature of conditions on Earth. man averred that the total harvest of fish from the Winds from the sea bring the rain that deter- ocean each year could be expanded to some 2 bil- mines where plants and animals on land shall lion tons, given the right technology. At the same thrive. Their patterns of distribution, in turn, time, Scripps oceanographer John D. Strickland determine the life-style of humans dependent preferred a much lower number, admitting a on agriculture. maximum of 600 million tons.6 Both guesses Awareness that our planet has an enormous were much too high, exceeding reality by more ocean, with island continents, starts with the than a factor of 20 and of 6, respectively. In the discovery of the World Ocean around AD 1500. decades since, it has become clear that the total Knowledge that the deep ocean is cold and that catch has stagnated around 100 million tons, its salt is the same everywhere are achieve- despite ever increasing efforts. At the catch of 100 ments of the nineteenth century. Since then, the million tons, already, the sea is being fished out. science of the sea has expanded rapidly. The Large fish are becoming rare, and the food web in general pattern of this expansion, as seen in the the sea is changed accordingly.7 large oceanographic institutes around the To become an honorary citizen of New- world, is nicely reflected in the history of foundland (a distinction bestowed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (“Scripps” natives during happy hours to many a visitor for short), one of the largest and oldest of the over a suitable number of drinks) one must genre. As it happens, Scripps is just over 100 pass several tests, one of which consists of kiss- years old: it was founded in 1903. ing the lips of a dead codfish.8 There are good 8 DISCOVERING THE OCEAN UCPB002-3802G-C01_007-030.qxd 11/02/2009 08:45 PM Page 9 Aptara It is an extension of the continental shelf, out to some 200 miles off New England, covered with debris piled there by enormous glaciers that once moved out from the Hudson Bay region. The shelf ends at an underwater precipice where cold Arctic waters flowing southward meet the warmer water of the Gulf Stream. The meeting of cold and warm eddies provokes much turbu- lence and mixing, aided by strong currents inter- FIGURE 1.2. For centuries, herring and cod have supported acting with the shallow bottom, and this turbu- major fisheries of the North Atlantic. lence moves nutrient-rich deep waters into the sunlit zone at the surface. The rich supply of reasons for demanding that any citizen of New- nutrients and the strong sunlight in spring and foundland, real or honorary, should demon- early summer start the food chain that supports strate allegiance to this grim-faced denizen of the fish and crustaceans that cod feed on.11 the sea. The settling of the coast of Newfound- The Atlantic cod ranges throughout the land by Europeans, and indeed of all the shores North Atlantic, from the North Sea and around north of Cape Cod, owes a great debt to the rich the British Isles and the Bay of Biscay to Iceland cod fisheries of the Grand Banks off Newfound- and up to northern Norway and into the Barents land, and to those along much of the coast of Sea. An important problem for fishery biolo- Atlantic Canada and New England.9 gists has been to define the degree to which the The Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), until very stocks in different regions are separate popula- recently the King of the Grand Banks, is a tions. There was a time, in the early 1970s, member of the gadoid fishes, an extremely when Atlantic cod was the second most impor- important group of predators obtaining much tant species, by weight, in the world’s fish catch. of their food at the bottom of the sea, in fertile Only the Peruvian anchovy yielded a higher ton- regions. The cod is commonly caught at nage.12 By 1980, the catch had fallen from more weights up to 25 pounds or so but is able to than 3 million tons to just over 2 million, and grow to a size of 6 feet and 200 pounds.10 the cod moved from second to sixth place. The Other gadoids are the haddock, the pout, the cod’s less-exploited cousin, the Alaska pollock, poor cod, the coalfish or saithe, the pollock (the moved from third to first, the Peruvian anchovy British “Pollack”), the whiting, and the silver fishery having collapsed in 1973. In 1992, Peru- cod. The various species of the genus Gadus vian anchovy (by then recovered) and Alaskan differ in color and markings and appearance of pollock shared first and second place, while cod the lateral line, and the presence or absence of dropped off the list of the top 10 species. The a barbel (the appendage on the lower jaw that is fisheries of Atlantic Canada and Newfoundland the hallmark of the cod). suffered accordingly.13 Equally important, the Fishing for cod off New England was part of entire ecology supporting the bounty of the sea the negotiations between the new nation of the in the North Atlantic has been affected.14 United States of America and the King of Eng- A fishery can decline, in principle, for a num- land, following the revolution. At the insistence ber of reasons, including changing preferences of John Adams, the United States was granted of the fishermen, overfishing, unfavorable envi- fishing rights on the Grand Banks by England ronmental change, or a combination of these. and permission to land in Nova Scotia and The evidence suggests that the rise of very large Labrador to salt-dry the catch. Georges Bank is industrial fishing vessels with enormous nets largely in international waters (even today, and advanced facilities for finding and process- notwithstanding the expanded economic zone).

Load more