Commentary: State’s link to fishing industry is significant
Editor’s note: This commentary is based on Dr. Ed Hale’s Thursday presentation, “Examining Delaware’s Commercial Fishing Industry,” part of Delaware’s 23rd annual Chautauqua. Events continue through Sunday and a schedule can be found here.
The First State’s history is inexorably linked to the bounty of our coastal waters.
Even before the creation of the state, the value of our waters was well-known by the region’s indigenous people, who traveled from inland areas to the coast seasonally to reap nature’s offerings.
Fishing for food connects us to the ocean and coastal waters and to our history. The fish harvested commercially are not only important to the diets of many here in Delaware, they also make up significant aspects of our regional culture: gathering with family for steamed crabs, sampling different oysters at raw bars or landing our own rockfish (striped bass) on the beach, bays and charter boats as part of a vacation or event. Even for Delawareans who don’t participate in our large recreational fishing activities, we are connected to this local seafood and its impacts on culture and place through the commercial fishing industry, which has shrunk in recent decades but retains an outsized effect on who we are as residents of the coast.
Commercial fishing dates back to at least the Middle Ages in Europe with the sales of dried cod and herring along trade routes. If we examine the history of North American colonization within what became the United States, we can see how important commercial fishing activities were to the establishment of European settlements in the New World.
In fact, exploiting coastal natural resources is what helped drive an interest in the European colonization of the Delaware Bay. Lewes was founded as a Dutch whaling colony in 1631, before whaling was established in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Later in the 1600s, various ancillary businesses popped up in Cape May, New Jersey, to help support the growing demand for whale oil, blubber, baleen and other species that became an important industry, leading to the expansion of coastal communities throughout the region.
Many different species, including various fish, helped shape the cultural fabric of our region and are still fished today, connecting our historic roots from colonization to the modern era.
If we consider the history of fishing in North America prior to European colonization, we find historic accounts of the native people consuming some of the same species that would later prove instrumental to the success of colonization. Atlantic sturgeon represented a Colonial staple, with the first European settlers documenting the consumption of this species by the Powhatan Tribe in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The Lenape Tribe historically fished for anadromous species like American shad on the Delaware River, using fish weirs or long nets that funneled catch into a smaller collection point.
Anadromous fish are species that have a unique life history: They reside in marine waters as adults, then migrate, at different rates and intervals depending on the species, from coastal environments into the upper reaches of freshwater tributaries like the Delaware River. There, anadromous fish commonly concentrate in a smaller body of water to spawn. This also provides opportunities for people to collect the fish in higher numbers, due to the relatively shallow water they inhabit during these periods of staging and reproduction and because these waterways are more accessible to the people who rely on them for sustenance and trade. Alewife, American shad, Atlantic sturgeon, blueback herring and striped bass are all anadromous fish that are or have been important to the people of this region for thousands of years.
Today, we continue to rely on several of these fisheries and many others for important recreational and commercial industries, in addition to providing healthy coastal ecosystems and contributing to global dietary needs for animal protein. In the United States, commercial and recreational saltwater fishing generated more than $200 billion in sales and contributed more than $100 billion to the gross domestic product in 2016 alone, supporting some 1.7 million full- or part-time jobs, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
If we consider the money generated from the dockside sales of commercial fisheries landed in Delaware alone, the blue crab, black sea bass and striped bass fisheries are worth more than $8 million combined to the people who harvest these animals commercially, with more than 86% of that value tied to the commercial blue crab fishery. If we include recreational fisheries and aquaculture, we find that these species and others like the eastern oyster contribute even more to the nation and the state of Delaware in terms of economic value, healthy dietary contributions and the ecosystem services these organisms provide.
As consumers and community members, we need to do more to educate ourselves about the ecological and economic significance associated with both commercial fisheries and aquaculture, so we can engage with these natural resources in a meaningful, sustainable manner.
Dr. Ed Hale is a marine advisory specialist with the Delaware Sea Grant Program and holds a faculty appointment with the University of Delaware School of Marine Science & Policy.
