page_title: Maritime history of California
section_title: Modern fisheries
hierarchical_section_title: Maritime history of California / California fisheries / Modern fisheries
context_page_description: In the California coast, the use of ships and the Pacific Ocean has historically included water craft, fisheries, shipbuilding, Gold Rush shipping, ports, shipwrecks, naval ships and installations, and lighthouses. The maritime history of California can be divided into several periods: the Native American period; European exploration period from 1542 to 1769; the Spanish colonial period, 1769 to 1821; the Mexican period, 1821 to 1847; and United States statehood period, which continues to the present day.
context_section_description: During the Spanish colonization and Mexican periods there are no known fisheries developed. Indeed, they probably contracted as the Chumash people and Tongva people were enticed to move to the Spanish Missions of California and their movement and populations rapidly decreased.
  During the California Gold Rush there were many new immigrants who were familiar with fishing. There was a large demand for fresh food including fresh fish and shellfish among the rapidly increasing California population. Providing fresh food products were one of the most wanted and lucrative trades that developed among the California Argonauts. The small Californio population before the rush were only able to provide some beef—their main "product" before 1850 had been cowhides and tallow. After the California Gold Rush started developing a market for fresh fish, many Azorean-Portuguese turned from gold mining to fishing. Fisherman established several small fishing communities up and down the California coast selling fish in towns and cities from San Diego to Eureka. They built their own small fishing boats using the traditional "lateen" sail technology common in the Mediterranean on their fishing boats.
  After the gold rush started and Chinese immigrants appeared some of the first "modern" fishermen in California who started fishing in about 1853. The Chinese were using sampans built in California to fish for squid, abalone and fish on Monterey Bay. The Chinese, who came from the coastal Canton region of South China Sea, were able to export roughly two hundred to eight hundred pounds of fresh fish to San Francisco every day or one hundred tons per year. The Chinese later specialized in squid fishing at night for their Asian markets.
  In 1899, the sardine fishery collapsed in Italy, energizing the Italian fishermen's immigration to California's fishing villages. The same year, the first sardine cannery in San Francisco Bay was built. Sardines, at this time, existed in large schools of millions of fish migrating each year up the California coast to spawn.
  Fishing technology at Monterey prior to 1905 was archaic and inefficient; the canning process was equally crude. The unsightliness, odor, and processing waste from harbor canneries dictated that all future canneries would have to locate away from any business or residential district. To catch more fish the fishermen turned to the more efficient lampra fish net used in Sicily. The lampra net is set around a school of fish and when both ends are retrieved the vessel tows the net forward, closing the bottom and then top of the net while it scoops up much of the school of fish. By 1912 70,000 cases of sardines were shipped.
  Other techniques were developed for "reducing" fish heads, tails, guts and skin into meal that could be processed into fertilizer and livestock feed. "Reduction" was cheap because it didn't require much labor, and the market for fishmeal was unlimited. Monterey became a cannery town. About 70% of all sardines were ground up and used as fertilizer and livestock feed with only about 30% canned for human consumption. The yield of sardines landed in California was about 500,000 tons in 1940 down to only 53 tons in 1953.
  In 1940 sardines were the most valuable fishing stock in the state. As the temperature of the ocean dropped the migrating sardine schools largely disappeared after 1950 from California waters and nearly all the canneries shut down. The ocean temperature has an irregular cycle called the Pacific decadal oscillation turned water temperatures colder in the mid-1940s, driving sardines southward and intensifying the pressures brought on by overfishing. As the ocean temperatures are cycling higher now there is some evidence that the sardines are starting to return.
  Today the Monterey Bay Aquarium, displaying many types of marine life, is located on the former site of a sardine cannery on Cannery Row off the Pacific Ocean shoreline in Monterey. The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) is a U.S. Federally protected marine area offshore of California's central coast aroun
caption: Early steam powered seine netter
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