Tin can coast : a history of industry, greed, and fishing in the golden state / Joseph Ogilvy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ogilvy, Joseph, author.

Contributor:

Bloomsbury (Firm), publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fisheries--California--History.

Fisheries.

Fisheries--Environmental aspects.

Tuna fisheries.

Abalone fisheries.

Sardine fisheries.

California--History.

California.

Genre:

Informational works.

Physical Description:

xvi, 312 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm

Other Title:

History of industry, greed, and fishing in the golden state

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2026.

Summary:

The hidden story of the California Coast, told through generations of immigrants, surges of industry, and three marine species caught in the dragnet of human history. Look west from San Francisco or Monterey, past the surfers and cargo ships. This is the California Current, 1,900 miles of the most productive waters on earth. It was here that eighteenth-century locals encountered frisbee-sized abalone mollusks, sardine schools the size of buses, and yellowfin tuna, each the size of a man. But it was not to last. Over the next three centuries, the abalone, sardine, and tuna were swept into the violent undertow of history. Their species became resources. Fishing and hunting drove the Spanish-Russian territory battle of the eighteenth century, California's virulently racist first "conservation" laws in the 19th, and an ad campaign that kept America fed on just-like-chicken canned goods in the 20th. Along the way, they became drivers of geopolitical competition, catalysts for the dramatic rise and fall of Cannery Row aristocracy, and even surly muses for John Steinbeck and Fritz Lang. Collapsing the distinctions between human and natural history, Tin Can Coast brings the cautionary tale of the California shore to life.

Contents:

Prologue

Introduction

Otters

Abalone golden age

A new harvest

From the ashes

Conservation

Canneries

Irrational fishing

South

Reduction

Monterey-by-the-Smell

One-track mind

Peaked

Pearl Harbor

After the collapse

Hubris

Offshored

Epilogue.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-299) and index.

ISBN:

1639736816

9781639736812

OCLC:

1533925571

Publisher Number:

90104865943