The Fishery Technology Complex: From Mapping to Depletion of Pacific Ocean Perch, 1880s–1970s

The rapid collapse of the valuable Pacific Ocean perch fishery in the Gulf of Alaska around the mid-twentieth century is a vivid example of how the development, adoption, and transfer of technology between scientific cultures contributed to a conservation crisis. Technology adopted to support trawl fishery in the Gulf suggests that knowledge of bottom topography, deployment of a full suite of navigational instruments, specialized fishing gear, fleet communications, and positioning systems were key to exploiting and sampling this species of fish. The technologies were transferred to fishers and fishery researchers from a spectrum of sources ranging from academic researchers to natural historians to military agencies. Soviet and Japanese trawl fleets quickly brought about overfishing levels by moving into the region, targeting key fish habitats, and accessing and refining information on the Alaskan continental shelf garnered by American agencies. Technology was applied perversely; it was used to support development of recommendations for reducing exploitation but was also used to assist fishers in fish stock location. In the end, production goals set by managers resulted in over-exploitation.