Since the Viking ascendancy in the Middle Ages, the Atlantic has
shaped the lives of people who depend upon it for survival. And
just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative
account of this interdependency, W. Jeffrey Bolster, a historian
and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long
environmental history of our impact on one of the largest
ecosystems in the world.
While overfishing is often thought of as a contemporary problem,
Bolster reveals that humans were transforming the sea long before
factory trawlers turned fishing from a handliner's art into an
industrial enterprise. The western Atlantic's legendary fishing
banks, stretching from Cape Cod to Newfoundland, have attracted
fishermen for more than five hundred years. Bolster follows the
effects of this siren's song from its medieval European origins to
the advent of industrialized fishing in American waters at the
beginning of the twentieth century.
Blending marine biology, ecological insight, and a remarkable
cast of characters, from notable explorers to scientists to an army
of unknown fishermen, Bolster tells a story that is both ecological
and human: the prelude to an environmental disaster. Over
generations, harvesters created a quiet catastrophe as the sea
could no longer renew itself. Bolster writes in the hope that the
intimate relationship humans have long had with the ocean, and the
species that live within it, can be restored for future
generations.
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