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Old 01-31-2022, 07:39 PM   #1
Michael Thayne
 
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Default [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics has a fair amount of information for working out reasonable population sizes for hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and farmers. And a number of Pyramid articles have further expanded on the farming rules. However, fishing seems like it's going to break a lot of patterns these other modes of subsistence follow. I have seen estimates of pre-contact aboriginal islander populations that seem incredibly high if you are just looking at land area—for example, 10,000 inhabitants in the Marshall Islands (70 square miles). Of course, land area shouldn't be relevant to fishing yields. So what kind of population sizes can fishing support?

One approach would be to assume that a square mile of fishable sea can produce about as much food as a square mile of land use for hunting and gathering. But that leaves unanswered the question, "how far can low-tech fishing communities stray from the coast?" Furthermore, aquatic ecosystems are very different than land-based ones—among other things, you see much lower rates of energy loss between trophic levels. I would not be surprised if a square mile of sea can actually support significantly more people than a square mile of hunting grounds.
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Old 01-31-2022, 08:16 PM   #2
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

Regarding the primary question, I have no answer, except to say that I'm not confident "fishermen per square mile of ocean" is even an appropriate lens through which to be examining the question- fish, unlike crops, are mobile, so fishing in a given area will both depend on and have an effect on factors outside the direct area of operation of the fishing boats.

Regarding the second question, "how far can low-tech fishing communities stray from the coast," the answer seems to be "pretty far, if given cause". English cod fisherman were operating off the coast of Newfoundland soon after Columbus if not before, so crossing an ocean isn't out of the question.
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Old 01-31-2022, 08:18 PM   #3
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

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Originally Posted by ravenfish View Post
Regarding the primary question, I have no answer, except to say that I'm not confident "fishermen per square mile of ocean" is even an appropriate lens through which to be examining the question- fish, unlike crops, are mobile, so fishing in a given area will both depend on and have an effect on factors outside the direct area of operation of the fishing boats.
It's more complicated than the farming case, but I don't see it being necessarily worse than the "hunters per square mile of land" question.
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Old 01-31-2022, 08:21 PM   #4
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

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Originally Posted by ravenfish View Post
Regarding the primary question, I have no answer, except to say that I'm not confident "fishermen per square mile of ocean" is even an appropriate lens through which to be examining the question- fish, unlike crops, are mobile, so fishing in a given area will both depend on and have an effect on factors outside the direct area of operation of the fishing boats.
It's also very dependent on what kind of fishing is available; for example, the fishing of salmon runs on the northwest coast of North America supported quite large populations without a lot of deep sea fishing (AFAIK) because the fish are literally coming to you...

You could also worry about aquaculture; I seem to recall an instance of TL0 eel farming in Australia, and I'd be pretty surprised if Polynesian folks hadn't altered their nearby waters to encourage the fish they wanted.
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Old 01-31-2022, 09:06 PM   #5
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

How far fishers can go is also dependent on the available shipbuilding materials. Easter Island had a major population crash when they cut down all the trees that could be used to build deep-sea canoes and were restricted to inshore fishing
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Old 01-31-2022, 09:23 PM   #6
Michael Thayne
 
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

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How far fishers can go is also dependent on the available shipbuilding materials. Easter Island had a major population crash when they cut down all the trees that could be used to build deep-sea canoes and were restricted to inshore fishing
Oh wow. I looked up Easter Island and apparently it's thought that at its pre-contact peak, it had a population density of over 200 people per square mile, which is higher than anything I've heard for any pre-modern population, including extremely fertile floodplains.
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Old 02-01-2022, 02:13 PM   #7
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

Didn't the Amerindians up around Seattle manage quite large populations on mostly fish? Mind you, I know they were supposed to be trading fish-oil inland so it may be more complicated...
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Old 02-01-2022, 03:30 PM   #8
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

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Didn't the Amerindians up around Seattle manage quite large populations on mostly fish? Mind you, I know they were supposed to be trading fish-oil inland so it may be more complicated...
That'd be the salmon runs. (Also, the Puget Sound and Salish Sea make for good fishing grounds, not to mention plenty of shellfish.)
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Old 02-01-2022, 04:30 PM   #9
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

No population is sustainable just by fishing because some nutrients we need can't be obtained from fish. You can live mostly on fish but not exclusively. Any calculations would need to take into account alternative food sources as well.
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Old 02-01-2022, 05:19 PM   #10
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Human population sizes supportable by fishing

Having actually (and foolishly) attempted to research the question, the answer is "It depends." The numbers vary vastly, and at low tech levels, are entirely dependent on how many hulls you have to put in the water. The only caveat is that cold water's more productive than warm water, and that inshore waters can get depleted quickly, but even there it's very difficult to deplete a fishery on any tech level much before TL 6.


One other point: a coastal town would have two-thirds of its population or more involved in the maritime trades, whether as sailors themselves or in the many support elements. Regardless of the population, this will seriously skew the numbers of businesses/people involved in anything else.
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