Elizabeth J. Pillsbury

This project argues that the rise of a sport fishing industry along the Atlantic Coast undermined efforts for meaningful marine conservation policies from the late-nineteenth century until the present day. The politicization of competing fishing interests coupled with uncertain theories of marine science resulted in state and federal legislation that fueled the expansion of the sport fishing industry and large-scale commercial operations with little protections for fish populations. This thesis explains how and why the coastal fishing communities and coastal ecologies that provided fish for local markets lost out.