Suzanne Morton, Contested Catch: Lobster, Localism, and Canada’s Atlantic Coast, 1870-1970. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2025. 296 pages. ISBN 9781487571825.
Reviewed by Lissa Wadewitz
Suzanne Morton argues that local conditions and customs strongly shaped the evolution of Canada’s Atlantic lobster industry and its management by the state. This was a dispersed fishery that frustrated government policing efforts and hampered the centralization of processing facilities. The Canadian state evolved in tandem with the commercial fishery after Confederation, and this parallel development allowed industry players to influence government oversight and related regulations, sometimes for blatantly political ends. Grounded in a rich source base, Morton’s book provides the first full-length historical overview of what quickly became the most economically valuable fishery on Canada’s east coast.
After an initial background chapter on early harvesting practices, Chapter Two traces the importance of changing technologies to the rise of the commercial industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Canning was initially the best way for fishermen and, increasingly, larger packers, to capitalize on this resource and export their products abroad, but the spatiality of lobster habitat kept processing plants decentralized. First World War market disruptions in Europe combined with improvements in transportation and refrigeration led the industry to turn to live lobster, which dominated the market by the mid-1930s (p.54).
Chapters Three and Four examine efforts by the Department of Marine and Fisheries (DMF) to oversee and propagate the industry. The DMF imposed various regulations and created management districts, but policing presented serious challenges for federal regulators, and they soon turned to issuing licenses and license revocations to encourage compliance with the law. The prevalence of local customs regarding exclusive access to certain fishing grounds also interfered with the ability of the state to enforce regulations until well after the Second World War.
The DMF looked for politically expedient ways to control overharvesting but as occurred in other fisheries, soon turned to artificial propagation as the least controversial path forward. The agency rewarded political supporters with hatcheries (and thus jobs) from the late 1800s until the First World War, when lack of results finally led to their abandoning these efforts. The DMF also repeatedly, albeit unsuccessfully, attempted to establish a lobster fishery in British Columbia between 1887 and the 1960s. (pp.91-96) Various government commissions sometimes offered fishermen the chance to share local ecological knowledge with Ottawa bureaucrats, but such opportunities faded as the twentieth century progressed (pp. 96-109).
While Chapter Three focused on fishery policies, Chapter Five centers on their enforcement. Understaffed and under-funded, the DMF’s cadre of inspectors—often political appointees—generally did not have the power or the will to effectively control the vast Maritime coastline and locals resisted in clever and sometimes violent ways. The force started using more sophisticated methods and technology in the 1950s, but locals defied or attempted to manipulate the law to their advantage.
In Chapter Six, Morton shows how fishery regulations and their enforcement were directly tied to partisan goals. Federal elections were closely contested, giving lobster interests leverage over both their representatives and the implementation of regulations. For a time, the lobster industry held significant sway over both Liberals and Conservatives and many packers themselves became active in the political arena. As the twentieth century progressed, however, that influence decreased, due to changes in political representation practices. Both packers and fishermen began organizing their own associations and cooperatives to advocate for certain laws and policies.
Concerns about lobster stock vulnerability shifted to a focus on the economic conditions confronting lobster fishermen after the Second World War. Chapter Seven shows how the “lobster question” became centered on enhancing fishermen’s income and the privatization of access rights. The rise of technocratic economists in the Department of Fisheries deemed the lobster industry inefficient and under-capitalized and proposed a limited entry fishery managed for maximum sustained yield and economic stability. These ideas became policy in the late 1960s, with lobster becoming the first Atlantic fishery to adopt a limited entry licensing system.
The epilogue traces the fishery’s history from the 1970s to the present. By 1990, the number of lobster fishing licenses had been reduced by nearly 70% (p.194) while borrowing programs prompted investments in more advanced technologies. In the 1970s and 1980s, the government took steps to protect independent fishermen from a corporate takeover, even as neoliberal ideas about privatization proliferated elsewhere. Since the 1990s, several important Supreme Court rulings have resulted in more Indigenous people entering the fishery, leading to tensions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous fishermen. This has led to skyrocketing license prices and independent fishermen being increasingly beholden to large corporations who finance their license purchases. Ongoing racial tensions and concerns about the future impacts of climate change continue to plague the industry.
Overall, Contested Catch is a welcome addition to our fisheries history library as it is a well-researched and thorough treatment of this prized transnational industry whose Canadian side has largely escaped attention from environmental historians. Morton demonstrates that, unlike the far more studied Atlantic fin-fish or west coast salmon industries, this fishery did not centralize and industrialize in the same ways. Instead, the interplay between the state and local communities influenced management and fishing practices even as locals’ strong adherence to proprietary access rights complicated those efforts. This book thus unpacks the “social politics of regulation” (p.9) and the significance of the industry’s persistent rural and geographically-scattered nature.
Despite these important contributions, the book’s chapter structure lends itself to some repetition, as both the topics and chapter timeframes overlap, resulting in somewhat confusing chronologies. In addition, more sources from individual fishermen would have enhanced Morton’s treatment of their experiences and, though otherwise written in a lively style, some readers may find the author’s penchant for lengthy paragraphs an accessibility barrier. Finally, although Morton acknowledges the transnational nature of this fishery, presenting tantalizing glimpses of the international rivalries that characterized the interactions between American and Canadian industry players at different points in time, more sustained attention to how or if these conditions affected fishing practices, policymaking, regional geopolitics, or policing efforts north of the border would have animated this history further. Still, these are small quibbles, as Contested Catch provides a much-needed history of a vital Canadian fishery.
Cover image: “Two men, two women and a child beside lobsters and traps, Fundy National Park, New Brunswick / Deux hommes, deux femmes et un enfant debout autour de casiers à homard, parc national Fundy (Nouveau-Brunswick),” 1953, Chris Lund, National Film Board of Canada Still Photography Division, BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives, CC BY 2.0.
Lissa Wadewitz
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- Review of Morton, Contested Catch - July 3, 2026