Recent scholarly emphasis on the social and economic repercussions of Western imperial and colonial policies have heightened awareness of how pervasive colonial attitudes shaped policies designed to maximize the efficiency of resource husbandry and extraction. Extending this analysis to oceans and waters adjacent to national and colonial territories offers insights into why many early fisheries scientists embraced a similar agenda. Indeed Thomas Henry Huxley’s 1883 dictum - that most ocean fisheries could be viewed as being inexhaustible (given then-current technologies) - can be seen as fitting into the expansionist British imperial context. While not universally agreed-upon, many scientists engaged in crafting new spheres of influence as government fisheries experts heartily endorsed Huxley's decree. Interpreting the early history of fisheries science within an imperial-colonialist context offers insights into the perplexing contradictory characteristics that are its most salient features: purportedly designed to address overfishing, its experts instead promoted a modernized and industrialized fishery. This can be seen in the fisheries science cradled by British colonies across the globe, and by emerging nation-states such as Canada and Norway, engaged in their own colonial-national enterprises. It is not so apparent, strangely, in early US fisheries science. Recent scholarship by Thomas Earle - The Liberty to Take Fish- gives insights for understanding America’s divergent fisheries science, and Britain’s use of fisheries diplomacy to assert global power. This paper will use a colonialist interpretation of pre-Second World War fisheries science to explain clear contradictions embedded in early fisheries science.

This paper focuses on the Colonial Fisheries Advisory Committee (CFAC), operating between 1943 and 1961, which focused on ‘optimising’ and ‘developing’ fisheries throughout the British empire. CFAC concentrated on advancing research into fish biology and stock health within waters under colonial control while encouraging a programme of technology transfer surrounding gears, processing tools, and watercraft. In this vision for fisheries development, nutritional concerns were paired with commercial development and conservationist regulations, in which fish were recognised as crucial sources of protein for coastal and inland communities but were perceived to be underexploited or harvested using inefficient and unsustainable methods.

Crucially, CFAC was instituted at a time when the major principles and approaches of fisheries science developed and became embedded within Western-oriented fisheries management regimes. This centred on attaining an optimum yield—where ‘optimum’ meant optimum long-term economic potential—by maximising yields to a level that did not cause stocks to go into decline. From the colonial perspective, the scene was set whereby the idea of an optimum yield provided the groundwork for fisheries development programmes based on scientific research and assumptions of centralised control over natural resources. Increased efficiency and productivity of colonial fisheries was to develop together with scientific research to inform the effective management of ‘modernised’ fisheries towards an optimum yield.

This paper will explore the major discourse and principles shaping CFAC’s activities and vision, demonstrating how fisheries science and post-war colonial development converged in this blueprint to exploit and control marine resources throughout the British empire.

This paper explores how white South African industrialists, scientists and government officials, and
racially heterogeneous fishers, responded to fluctuations in fish catch. During the mid-20th century, white South African fishing interests established reduction plants and canneries in Walvis Bay using the Apartheid Migrant Labour system to staff the processing plants and vessels. Scientists in
South Africa set quotas for what they argued was a sustainable catch of fish in the 1950s, but by the
1960s under substantial pressure from government officials (many of whom had industry connections) and industry, the scientific consensus had shifted to suggest that higher catches could be permitted. By 1968, the catch reached unheard-of proportions, as two massive "mothership" factory
vessels began operating off Walvis Bay. Scientists urged the adoption of multi-species fishing, where anchovy, jack mackerel, hake and other species would supplement the pilchard catch and reduce pressure on pilchards; this increased pressure on other species but did little to ameliorate pressure on the pilchard. By the early 1970s pilchard became scarce, and scientists launched a "crisis
epistemology" (in the words of K.P. Whyte) investigation into the causes of the decline. But when a temporary resurgence came in the mid-1970s due to favorable environmental conditions, scientists prematurely declared the crisis over and allowed high catches again. A multi-racial coalition of
fishers contested this knowledge and these decisions, and organized to engage in a strike protesting the increase of the quota, possibly only time in history fishers have gone on strike to reduce a fishing quota.