A Science on the Scales: The Rise of Canadian Atlantic Fisheries Biology, 1898–1939.

Alan Belk is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy Department at the
University of Guelph.

Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) laid out a vast program of scientific research still in progress today, with the ultimate goal of completing the phylogenetic tree. One discipline particularly ready for the application of such a program was marine biology, and Canada was caught up in the international status race to develop its own marine biology industry. Unfortunately, Canada was also intent on establishing its own national identity. The government became involved not only in funding, but also in managing the science, and did so to the exclusion of many who had (and have) strong interests in it: those who fish and those who eat fish. The rest is history, which, fortunately, does not stop in 1939 as promised by the subtitle of this book. In a deservedly long epilogue, we are given an account of the mismanagement of Canadian fisheries by the federal government over the last 40 years or so. One issue, of course, is just what the role of the government is in fishery management. No matter what else, it should include the prevention of the extinction of codfish.

Hubbard writes in a style and tone that is, for a scholarly work, engaging. She weaves together a story drawn from government archives, scholarly papers, and contemporary reports, then makes it pointed, interesting, and meaningful. Apart from her fondness for piscine puns (shared, apparently, by many writers on marine matters), she shows how the development of marine biology took place despite the almost universal mistaken acceptance of the view that the oceans contained inexhaustible supplies of fish, and how it has thus from its inception struggled for acceptance against the status quo.