ABSTRACT
European visitors to the east coast of North America during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, such as John Cabot who arrived in 1497, often noted that cod were so abundant that those desiring to harvest them had only to lower a basket and scoop up the desired amount. As late as the 1880s T. H. Huxley, a prominent British scientist and well-known proponent of Darwin's theory of natural selection, asserted famously (though erroneously as it turned out) that “the cod fishery, the herring fishery, the pilchard fishery, the mackerel fishery, and probably all the great sea fisheries, are inexhaustible; that is to say, that nothing we do seriously affects the number of the fish.” 1 Equally distinguished commentators expressed similar views regarding other natural resources. Until the waning days of the nineteenth century knowledgeable observers of human-environment relations were able to assert that humans lacked the capacity to disrupt large biophysical systems.
