All the Boats on the Ocean

This historical account of overfishing "sees the future of fisheries hinging on holistic approaches involving fish, fisher and environment" (Nature).

Most current fishing practices are neither economically nor biologically sustainable. Every year, the world spends $80 billion buying fish that cost $105 billion to catch, even as heavy fishing places growing pressure on stocks that are already struggling with warmer, more acidic oceans. How have we developed an industry that is so wasteful?


Carmel Finley explores how government subsidies propelled the expansion of fishing from a coastal, in-shore activity into a global industry. Looking across politics, economics, and biology, All the Boats on the Ocean casts a wide net to reveal how the subsidy-driven expansion of fisheries in the Pacific during the Cold War led to the growth of fisheries science and the creation of international fisheries management. In a world where this technologically advanced industry has enabled nations to colonize the oceans, fish literally have no place left to hide, and the future of the seas and their fish stocks is uncertain.


"Finley is an engaging writer, weaving together historical, economic, and societal threads in a narrative that anchors global developments in the accounts of local actors." —Science

"The most comprehensive and empirically grounded account yet of how the modern transnational fishery regime emerged." —Oregon Historical Quarterly

"Finley links the fisheries story to the 'great transformation' of global ecology in the postwar period by way of the technology, policy, and politics of food production . . . a significant, original book." —Arthur McEvoy, Southwestern Law School, author of The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980