How Chinese Immigrants Built and Lost a Shellfish Industry: Social and Environmental Lessons from California History

 

Abstract: In the midst of the California Gold Rush, a small group of enterprising Chinese immigrants recognized the untapped resources along the Pacific Coast. Freed from both human and sea otter predation for decades, coastal California was teeming with abalone stocks. By the mid-nineteenth century, the first commercial abalone fisheries sprang to life and rapidly grew into a multimillion-dollar industry. By the late twentieth century, however, overfishing, disease, and mismanagement combined to end all commercial abalone fishing along North America’s Pacific Coast and drive several species to the brink of extinction. The culmination of over a decade of archaeological field, archival, and laboratory work, we explore the history of Chinese abalone fishing in southern California. This is not, however, a footnote of California history. It is an analogy for the broader history of Chinese immigrants in America—their struggles, their successes, the institutionalized racism they faced, and the unique ways they shaped the identity of our nation. It is also a microcosm for our world’s fisheries. The story of ecological dysfunction, overharvesting, and eventual collapse is one that can be told with countless species worldwide. The crisis facing Pacific Coast abalone parallels the collapse of many of the most important and productive fisheries around the world. The key to avoiding future crises and restoring our degraded marine ecosystems may be by looking to the past.

 

Biography: Todd Braje is the executive director of the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. Dr. Braje spent nearly 15 years as a faculty member at San Diego State’s Department of Anthropology, where he conducted archaeological research specializing in long-term human-environmental interactions, the archaeology of maritime societies, historical ecological approaches to understanding coastal hunter-gatherer-fishers, and the peopling of the Americas. Dr. Braje also is a former Oregon middle school teacher, a returned Peace Corps volunteer, and the former Irvine Curator of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences. Along with over 100 academic manuscripts, Dr. Braje has published several books, monographs, and edited volumes. His latest book, Understanding Imperiled Earth: How Archaeology and Human History Can Inform Our Planet’s Future (April 2024, Smithsonian Books), explores the ways archaeology and history can act as critical guides for addressing the modern environmental crisis.