Abstract

This paper traces the rise and fall of, in its day, one of the most important fisheries in the world. Fishing is said to have commenced in 495AD. So prolific were the stocks that the fishery remained sustainable with the expansion of demand brought about by the arrival of the railways in the 1800s. The invention of the steam drifter in 1896 led to a rapid growth in total revenue product and overfishing eventually brought about the complete collapse of the fishery which ended in the 1960s. This paper examines why the sustainable equilibrium forecast by the Gordon-Schaefer model did not materialise and the implications of advances in technology for management of a local fishery based on a highly migratory species.