In an era of terrorist attacks it sounds ridiculous to fight over fish but it’s a war that has been going on for centuries all over the globe and it has only intensified in the last 100 years. Whether it’s one country against another, native people vs. settlers, tribe against tribe or commercial vs. recreational, wars have been and are still being fought over fish. I’ve made a list of just a few examples of some large and small conflicts fought over, or because, of fish.
There were three wars fought over cod in the twentieth century. They were waged in the fifties sixties and seventies between Iceland and Great Britain. British vessels were fishing in traditional Icelandic water or what they claimed as their exclusive economic zone. Iceland used it warships to escort the English fishing vessels out and Britain responded by escorting its fishing fleet with her warships. There was a similar “war†fought over Atlantic cod in the late 1980’s between Iceland and Canada over the right to fish for the dwindling cod stock on the Grand Banks.
In Northern California Native Americans traded shots with white gill-netters over the right to fish for salmon in the late 1970’s. Native Americans were accused by white fishermen of stringing gillnets completely across the upper Klamath and Eel rivers where they flowed through tribal lands. If true, this would have affected both commercial and recreational salmon fishing in the lower river sections for years to come.
Living in that area of the country at the time I can tell that when you hear a shot whiz over your head you realize that somebody’s taken fishing regulation to the next level.
In the 1970’s a trawl fisheries was developed on some of the rift valley lakes in east Africa. An entire economy sprang up around those fisheries; boat building, net making, housing, stores and a host of support facilities. A population of over 500,000 people made a living from fishing in one way or another. Unfortunately for them those fisheries weren’t managed very well. In fact, except for a few Peace Corp volunteers telling them to slow down the rate of fishing, they weren’t managed at all.
The fisheries collapsed as a result of this lack of management. The people lost their way of life, their primary food source and the lake economy failed. The people were left with two choices – either move or starve. Estimates are that 300,000 people died either of starvation or were killed in the local wars with tribes whose lands they tried move through. Natives of these lands saw them only as people who would take what little food they had.
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