The aquatic frontier : oysters and aquaculture in the progressive era /
Author / Creator: | Hanes, Samuel P., author. |
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Imprint: | Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2019] |
Description: | 1 online resource (xi, 230 pages). |
Language: | English |
Series: | Environmental history of the northeast Book collections on Project MUSE. |
Subject: | |
Format: | E-Resource Book |
URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12352167 |
Summary: | Although few remember their former significance, oysters were one of the largest U.S. fisheries at their peak in the late nineteenth century. As the fishery industrialized on-and offshore, oyster farms and canning factories spread along the Eastern Seaboard, with overharvesting becoming increasingly common. During the Progressive Era, state governments founded new agencies to cope with this problem and control this expanding economy. Regulators faced a choice: keep elaborate conservation systems based on common property rights or develop new ones with private, hatchery-stocked aquaculture farms. The tradition-preserving solution won, laying the groundwork for modern oyster management.The Aquatic Frontier explores the forms this debate took between 1870 and 1920 in law enforcement, legislative advising, natural science, and oyster cartography. Samuel P. Hanes argues that the effort to centralize and privatize the industry failed due to a lack of understanding of the complex social-ecological systems in place -- a common dilemma for environmental managers in this time period and for fisheries management confronting dangers from dwindling populations today. |
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Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xi, 230 pages). |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
ISBN: | 9781613766613 1613766610 9781613766620 1613766629 9781613766606 1613766602 9781625344120 1625344120 9781625344137 1625344139 |