Historical Perspectives of Fisheries Exploitation in the Indo-Pacific [Paperback]

The waters of the Indo-Pacific were at the centre of the global expansion of marine capture fisheries in the twentieth century, yet surprisingly little has been written about this subject from a historical perspective. This book, the first major study of the history of fishing in Asia and Oceania, presents the case-studies completed through the History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP) initiative. It examines the marine environmental history and historical marine ecology of the Indo-Pacific during a period that witnessed the dramatic escalation of industrial fishing in these seas.

1. Introduction: Historical Perspectives of Fisheries Exploitation in the Indo-Pacific.- 2. Unsettled Seas: Towards a History of Marine Animal Populations in the Central Indo-Pacific.- 3. Changing practice in the Madras marine fisheries: legacies of the Fish Curing Yards.- 4. History of shark fishing in Indonesia.- 5. A history of whaling in the Philippines: A glimpse of the past and current distribution of whales.- 6. Brackish water shrimp farming and the growth of aquatic monocultures in coastal Bangladesh.- 7. Evolution and development of the Taiwanese offshore tuna fishery.- 8. History of industrial tuna fishing in the Pacific Islands.- 9. Southern Bluefin Tuna: a contested history.- 10. The NSW steam trawl fishery on the south-east continental shelf of Australia, 1915-1961.- 11.Exploiting Green and Hawksbill Turtles in Western Australia: the Commercial Marine Turtle Fishery.- 12. Shifting baselines or shifting currents: an environmental history of fish and fishing in the south-west capes region of Western Australia.- 13. Shark Bay snapper: science, policy, and the decline and recovery of a marine recreational fishery.- 14. Conclusion: Learning from Asian and Indo-Pacific Fisheries History.

Joseph Christensen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University. He is the author of a number of scholarly articles and chapters in the fields of envirlóY