The Net Men and the Anglers: A Case Study in the Conflicts over Recreational and Commercial Fishing

Abstract

New York History Winter 2014© 2014 by The New York State Historical Association 70 The Net Men and the Anglers: A Case Study in the Conflicts over Recreational and Commercial Fishing Kevin Olsen, Montclair State University Conflicts over fishing rights are among the oldest and most common disputes in the maritime world. One conflict of this type is between commercial fishing and large-scale tourism. In many modern communities, the dispute has centered on the displacement of traditional fishing lifeways by waterfront development. Commercial Fisheries News reported that in twenty-first-century Maine, 84 percent of coastal communities are concerned about lack of shore access for working fishermen.1 Other disputes of this type center around the depletion of fish stocks and often feature competing stakeholders blaming the other side for declining catches.2 In the nineteenth century, an expanding New York City was one of the places where this type of conflict played out. Jamaica Bay had been a minor maritime center and home to isolated fishing and farming communities (see Figure 1). Over the course of the century, however, city dwellers came increasingly to rely on Jamaica Bay for recreation. Railroad transportation and a growing tourism infrastructure made the bay popular for swimming, boating, camping, and fishing. The bay was also home to a large fish-processing industry and commercial fishery. By the end of the 1800s, the city’s recreational needs focused new attention on commercial fishing practices and many people contended that the use of seines and other types of nets 1. “Working waterfront tools make Maine ballot,” Commercial Fisheries News 33 (2005). 2. Recent scholarship has explored the relationship between anthropogenic environmental impacts and changes to fishing communities. The historical consequences of overfishing in New England is the subject of Jeffrey Bolster’s The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012). A similar discussion appears in Jeremy B.C. Jackson, Karen E. Alexander, and Enric Sala, eds., Shifting Baselines: The Past and the Future of Ocean Fisheries (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2011). The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report in 2000 about the demographic changes in the developing world’s traditional fishing communities that explored how these communities perceived oceanic pollution. Uwe Tietze, George Groenewold, and Alain Marcoux, Demographic Change in Coastal Fishing Communities and its Implications for the Coastal Environment, no. 403 (Rome: United Nations Food & Agriculture Org., 2000), 81–89. Olsen Conflicts over Recreational and Commercial Fishing 71 was wasteful. To preserve game fish and tourist dollars, New York State passed laws that effectively closed the bay to all commercial fishing that employed any type of net. Some historians have argued that the conflict between recreational and commercial fishing was ultimately counterproductive. The historian Elizabeth Pillsbury contended that, after 1870, an alliance based on mutual interests between the commercial and recreational fishing interests in the New York City region began to break down. Pillsbury concluded that this failure to cooperate delayed implementation of regulations and management practices that would have protected commercial fisheries.3 Modern environmental managers will recognize the problem of conflicting stakeholder demands played out against a backdrop of changing circumstances. A system of local control over Jamaica Bay’s resources was incapable of addressing the declining fishery. The influx of recreational 3. Elizabeth Pillsbury, “An American Bouillabaisse: The Ecology, Politics and Economics of Fishing around New York City, 1870-present” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2009). Figure 1. Jamaica Bay is a twenty-square mile, shallow tidal estuary on the south shore of Long Island. Most of the New York City neighborhoods shown on this map were originally independent townships. Map courtesy of author. 72 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY anglers changed the economy of the bay and created a threat to the existing management system. The result was a conflict between stakeholders that was ultimately resolved because of financial concerns rather than ecological considerations. The larger issue of habitat destruction was not part of the resolution. Jamaica Bay Located entirely within the boundaries of New York City, Jamaica Bay is a shallow tidal estuary on the southern shore of Long Island. The western portion of the bay is in Brooklyn...