In this close examination of one of the nineteenth century's largest marine fisheries, Samuel P. Hanes shows how Progressive Era oyster management was defined by the push and pull of “populist” approaches to conservation, which prized traditional systems for safeguarding wild oyster stocks; and “modernist” approaches, which emphasized scientific efficiency through oyster aquaculture. Not unlike the American West, East Coast estuaries, according to Hanes, formed an “aquatic frontier” as oyster gathering gave way to farming and the coastal commons passed into private hands (11). Although the dust jacket announces that the “tradition-preserving solution won, laying the groundwork for modern oyster management,” the book itself shows something different. “Both populists and modernists worked to create new institutions,” Hanes concludes. “Together, they built agencies that are indispensible to modern conservation” (182).
These countervailing modes of oyster management developed during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Hanes explains how traditional oystermen, using “tongs,” plucked oysters from their beds along the Eastern Seaboard. States enacted laws to protect shellfish stocks while tongers devised bottom-up management regimes that ensured “equity, access, and independence, as well as environmental sustainability in many cases” (43). These grassroots systems of conservation, however, came under pressure from dredgers who, propelled by sail and steam, scraped oyster beds clean. Chesapeake oystermen bristled at the presence of northern dredgers, who hit oysters hard and also, some contended, spread dangerous ideas that undermined slavery (32). Oyster planters roused similar antipathy. By enclosing what had been common estuarine property, planters challenged the traditional fishery. Although tongers resisted planters through legislative petitions and outright protest, Hanes shows that market forces were such that “older communal forms of conservation gradually seemed less tenable” (44).
As competition over oysters increased, violence ensued. Dredgers frequently crossed into tonger territory, leading to armed conflict and in several cases bloodshed. To keep the peace, both Virginia and Maryland employed “oyster navies” and passed licensing and vessel registration laws. Several states, beginning with Rhode Island in 1842, also organized shellfish commissions, which surveyed oyster stocks and provided policy recommendations. If, as Samuel Hays argued, Progressive Era conservationists subscribed to a “gospel of efficiency,” The Aquatic Frontier shows that shellfish commissioners “produced two competing gospels” (95). Again, Hanes shows that populist commissioners privileged local knowledge and the protection of a common-pool resource, while modernist managers (and the scientists with whom they were largely aligned) believed that privatization incentivized cultivation, which they believed could replenish a depleted fishery.
These competing conceptions of progress guided the cartographer's pen. “Modernists,” Hanes explains, “drew maps to pave the way for expanded planting, whereas populists mapped to solidify traditional property rights” (133). For both groups, mapping natural and man-made oyster grounds depended on the definition of “natural.” An 1881 Maryland court decision defined a “natural” bed as one that had enough oysters to support a tonger's livelihood. But oyster beds shifted with storms and dredging. Prices fluctuated, which affected earnings. Defining what was natural and what was not was anything but clear. While commissioners in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and across Delaware Bay drew “straight-line” maps that tended to preserve traditional access rights, Chesapeake mapmakers used more intricate methods that ultimately privileged oyster planters. Hanes describes their surveying techniques, revealing that oyster cartographers of both political orientations provided “graphic images of nature and property designed to prompt more orderly behavior” (154).
That growing sense of order was essential to the creation of health regulations. After three Wesleyan students died of typhoid from eating tainted oysters in 1894, scientists on Long Island Sound began mapping sewage pollution and its effects on oyster stocks. New York began studying its waters in 1895, discovering that Jamaica Bay oysters had infected hundreds, if not thousands, with typhoid. A 1905 sanitary survey divided Narragansett Bay into pollution zones and barred harvesting oysters from waters closest to city sewage outputs. Although the New York-based Oyster Growers and Dealers Association initially downplayed the threat of oyster contamination, a 1924–1925 typhoid outbreak that led to the deaths of 150 people spurred the organization to work with the U.S. Public Health Service to develop packing, shucking, and shipping standards. Ultimately, Hanes posits that state-sponsored bacterial testing and mapmaking helped protect the public by making “safety visible to consumers” (179).
Drawing from numerous archival sources that illuminate the major oyster-producing areas of the East Coast, The Aquatic Frontier provides a comparative introduction to oyster harvesting in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hanes effectively describes the changing methods of oyster fishing and regulation and how various interest groups came to compete for a common resource. If at times the numerous subheadings within each chapter make his argument difficult to follow, Hanes nevertheless builds the book around a loose chronology, which provides structure to the overall narrative. The Aquatic Frontier concludes by explaining that “bottom-up solutions” shaped nineteenth-century oyster management but that “modernists simplified oystermen's complex goals down to maximizing productivity” (181). Hanes admits that he “takes sides and critiques the modernists,” but then concedes that “modernists deserve credit too” (182). Ultimately, we can conclude that Progressive Era oyster conservation was produced by two groups of reformers with different, though equally valuable, forms of expertise. In those places where Hanes highlights the synergies and slippages between those bodies of knowledge and translates them into policies, The Aquatic Frontier makes its most valuable contributions.
