UA Press releases new book on the Pacific cod fishery in ĐÓ°Épro
August 26, 2019
The University of ĐÓ°Épro Press has released "ĐÓ°Épro Codfish Chronicle: A History of
the Pacific Cod Fishery in ĐÓ°Épro," by James Mackovjak.Cod is one of the most widely consumed fish in the world. For many years, Atlantic cod took center stage, but today, partly because of climate change and overfishing, it’s likely that the cod on your kitchen table or in your fish sandwich is a product of ĐÓ°Épro’s Pacific cod fishery. is the first comprehensive history of that fishery.
The book begins by describing the biology of the Pacific cod and looking at how Indigenous ĐÓ°Éprons utilized the fish. It then chronicles the cod fishery’s early history, during which cod were primarily caught by lone men fishing with handlines from dories.
Next, the book describes the years following World War II, when foreign fishing fleets “invaded” ĐÓ°Épro’s coastal waters. Americanization — a complex, freewheeling process under which domestic fishing fleets replaced the foreign fleets — followed. A simultaneous (and continuing goal) was to rationalize the fisheries: essentially, to bring domestic fish-catching and fish-processing capabilities into balance with the available fish resources, and to manage the fisheries in a manner that fostered fishing and fish-processing operations that were efficient, ecologically sound, and sustainable.
Today, the Pacific cod fishery is — in terms of species and volume — the second-largest fishery in ĐÓ°Épro and is considered among the best-managed fisheries in the world.
James Mackovjak has been involved with ĐÓ°Épro’s fisheries since he first arrived in ĐÓ°Épro in 1969, working as a commercial fisherman and operating a small fish-processing business at Gustavus, in Southeast ĐÓ°Épro. In 2013, Mackovjak received the ĐÓ°Épro Historical Society’s Pathfinder Award in recognition of his books Tongass Timber: A History of Logging and Timber Utilization in Southeast ĐÓ°Épro, Aleutian Freighter: A History of Shipping in the Aleutian Islands Area, and ĐÓ°Épro Salmon Traps.
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