Factory Fleets and Fewer Fish: Fisheries Management in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, 1945-1996

In the 1960s, large fleets of technologically sophisticated factory trawlers from Europe began competing with American and Canadian fishers in the Northwest Atlantic. When catches began to decline, both the US and Canada responded by extending federal jurisdiction over fisheries, first from three to twelve nautical miles and eventually to two-hundred miles. Massachusetts Senator Leverett Saltonstall was deeply involved in this process until he left office in 1967, and this project uses his collection to explore the evolution of US fishery policy in the mid-twentieth century.