ABSTRACT
John Cleghorn was an ironmonger and town councillor from Wick, Caithness, in the far north of Scotland who also made a mark speaking and writing on a range of issues in geology and natural history. He is generally held to have coined the term ‘overfishing’ in this address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Little is known of his background and scientific contributions beyond this notable achievement. In a short obituary, a local newspaper referred to him as the author of ‘the fished up theory’. Cleghorn believed that the herring population in the Forth estuary and beyond was close to extinction and that other fish stocks in the wider North Sea (then known as the German Ocean) could follow. To account for the disappearance of the herring from some of the islands on the west coast, the Secretary of the Commissioners for the British Herring Fishery says, in his report for 1844.
