Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts

Chapter 10. “Investigator Blames Industry,Nature for Shortage”

Ed Ricketts’s serious studies of the sardine cycle span the almost twentyfive years he lived and worked in Monterey—from the mid-1920s through the late 1940s—as he watched the boom and bust of Cannery Row. By the time his last and most articulate essay about the subject, “Investigator Blames Industry, Nature for Shortage,” appeared in the 1948 Monterey Peninsula Herald, the canning industry had begun to collapse. In his article he attempted to explain the crisis in a historical context. The article ran on the first and third pages of the newspaper and included a bar graph of the annual tonnage of sardines caught along the entire North American Pacific coastline from the 1920–21 season through the 1947–48 season. Ricketts’s studies of the sardine were a natural extension of his scientific investigations and his personal connection to the local community. He was a staunch conservationist, and while he was willing to take, and took, the unpopular position that overfishing was a major factor in the collapse of the sardine population, he recognized that it was affected by a diverse and complicated set of factors—both human and natural— and knew the problem could not be solved simply. The rupture of an ecosystem he loved, and that he helped identify as a scientific entity, grieved him, as did the profound economic suffering it caused friends and neighbors of long standing. In his final essay, written just weeks before his death, Ed Ricketts delved deeply into the problem of sardine depletion , the causes of which, he recognized, were somewhat enigmatic. chapter 10 “Investigator Blames Industry, Nature for Shortage” 324 Out of his sense of loss, he articulated a holistic understanding of the fragile symmetry of the interdependent coast environment of marine and human communities. • • • • • • • • • Recent sardine activities, or perhaps I should say the lack of them, have done very little to change the picture presented in these columns last year. But it is perhaps worthwhile to point up a few ideas which last year’s article failed to emphasize. One is that the decrease isn’t sudden; the current trend started clear back in 1936. “Investigator Blames Industry” 325 Figure 17. Ricketts working in the laboratory at the California Packing Corporation, 1947. Originally published on page 3 of the Monterey Peninsula Herald, March 7, 1947. Courtesy of the California History Room, Monterey Public Library. Another is that we mustn’t regard over-fishing [sic] as being the sole factor in the present disaster, although it’s the only one over which we have any control. And a third is to stress the fact that some of the unfortunate practices of the past still are being continued—to the detriment of the whole industry. Unpopular Theory A large waterfront element continues to advance explanations for the increasing scarcity of sardines. The two most fantastic involve the dumping of munitions and the effects of the atom bomb, although obviously neither of these were in operation twelve years ago when the total landings started their downward slide. But [the] most likely explanation (and still by far the most unpopular!) is that the sardines we are searching for have already been canned and reduced. In other words, that the total number has decreased. At the same time a plausible theory is being entertained that the sardine population center has moved south, and I understand that at present Dr. Clark is investigating that phase. Whatever her investigation discloses , the unpleasant fact stares us in the face that the industry is over-expanded [sic]. For many years we have been increasing the numbers of our canneries and reduction plants, while at the same time the sardine population, if not actually decreasing, certainly can’t have been increasing. Even if the fish were to come back every year from now on in their greatest recorded numbers, as in the peak season twelve years ago, still there wouldn’t be enough to keep all our plants running at capacity. Not Sudden A chart is being reproduced to show total landings for the whole industry including floating reduction plants (floaters). This shows quite clearly that our banner year was clear back in 1936. No figures are available on the Mexican canneries at Ensenada, Cedros Island and perhaps elsewhere. And no estimates have been included to show the rather large amounts of young sardines taken as live bait off the Lower California coast by...