Ground Fishing In Colonial America

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Ground fishing or as it's called today, bottom fishing was the first major industry of Colonial times. Ground fishing is the catching of fish that is close to the bottom of the sea which was the first colonial industry in America. I chose this topic because I believe the abundant fish population in and around Plymouth, Cape Cod and Northwest regions off shore waters in the immediate area in Massachusetts was a primary reason for the travelers to settle there. Thus, the settlers would have sought a better area for sustenance. The fishing industry today in that area, Boston, the Cape and New Bedford are all the after effects of what the Colonial settlers started many years ago. How bottom fishing was started, the types of fishing used than and …show more content…

They harvested a variety of different species of fish. Salmon was their primary source of food and was very important to many of the tribes. Just as the Wampanoag tribe if they could have harvested salmon in late spring to fall it provided them with a long term of survival in winter. They preserved the salmon by letting it sun dry and smoked it. This tribe of Indians used a variety of fishing methods such as dip nets, spears and gill nets (2). The Native American tribes practiced many survival skills and was deeply connected with the land around them. Salmon was an abundant of source of protein in the Indians diet. They practiced a form of management in the form of rules and rituals that limited the catch they can do a day so they was able to have fish all year round. At the time of the first contact with Europeans in the late 1700 and early 1800 Indians established fisheries using nets and …show more content…

Catches of salt cod helped schooners and boat building industry made shipyards the busiest in the world. Ground fishing were caught with bait fished right from the dories and schooners (4). In 1930 early signs of stress due to the popularity of haddock fish. Scientist were asked to study the causes of the decline of fish. Harvard University had started a scientific investigation which resulted in a suggestion of increasing the sizes of mesh when catching fish. But that didn’t help much because there was such a decline in fish that congress had passed The Magnuson Act in 1976 by trying to take control of the economic zone and regulating a system of a domestic industry. They also decided to develop a program to help failing fishing by offering job retraining, vessel buyouts for fishing families that solely relied on

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