"AS FREE OF FISH AS A BILLIARD BALL IS OF HAIR": Dealing with Depletion in the Pacific Halibut Fishery, 1899-1924(1)

Building on recent work in fishery management and conservation history, Thistle considers early twentieth-century efforts to understand and address the effects of fishing on Pacific halibut. He focuses on the period before 1923, when legal arrangements placed the fishery under the cooperative control of Canada and US. However, Thistle argues that these arrangements were merely the beginning of a new chapter in an already long and contested story of societal interest, scientific study, and environmental change in the halibut fishery.