"Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age."H. L. Mencken
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A visit to Galicia. Spain
Visiting any of Galicia's major cities can be both enjoyable and educational. This part of Spain has a wealth of historic buildings ranging from Celtic forts and roman ruins, to Gothic and neo-classical architectural masterpieces. Many of the latter are ...
Houseboats Give Us The Freedom To Explore
(NC)-Ask those who do it. Most people say it is a very special kind of freedom to cruise this continent's most beautiful inland water routes in their own private family houseboat. The 386-kilometre Trent-Severn Waterway of Ontario for example is a ...
Philadelphia Is Hot For a Vacation Spot
Do you and your family love vacations that are also great opportunities for educating yourself about history and the pioneers that built this great country? What better way than a fun vacation that is filled with learning! And whether you are prone to ...
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No visit to the southwest would really be complete without a drive along Highway 1.The road offers dramatic views of California's sensational Pacific coast as it weaves from San Luis Obispo to Monterey. This is the home of the fish canning industry, made famous or perhaps infamous by John Steinbeck's portrayal of life in the area, in his book of the same name.
Today, Cannery Row has been transformed into a tourist Mecca featuring hotels and wonderful fish restaurants clustered around the star of the show, the amazingly huge, Monterey Bay Aquarium . The Aquarium features some of the delights of Pacific Ocean life such as a giant kelp forest, huge octopuses and an underwater window that looks out into the Bay and gives the spectator access to the fish life that is going on around. Definitely a must visit, and a very far cry from the canneries that had inhabited the area before.
As long ago as 1902 a Japanese immigrant named Otosaburo Noda saw that the enormous catches from the fruitful Pacific brought ashore by the Monterey Bay fisherman had enormous market potential. If the fish were cooked and canned in the area they could be sold anywhere in the US or the world for that matter, a feat quite impossible with fresh fish. So he and business partner, Harry Malpas opened the Monterey Fishing and Canning Company in the "street of the sardine" and the tinned fish industry in
Monterey was born. Others, to, were quick to grasp the opportunity. Frank Booth the "father of the sardine industry" muscled in and built a large scale fish packing plant in the following year, 1903.Unfortunatley the more successful new arrivals put Noda and Malpas out of business in 1907. It is, however, interesting to note that by the end of the First World War that three of the canneries on "Old Ocean Avenue" were Japanese owned and run.
Women did the work of preparing and packing the tins. The fishermen landed the catch in the morning; as soon as it was unloaded it was cooked and then canned. The whole operation had to be completed in the same day, no matter how long it took. The work was long, hard and often done in inhuman working conditions. It was that, which brought the area to Steinbeck's attention
He set "Cannery Row" in the immediate post depression years of the 1930s and used a friend, Dr Ed Ricketts as the model for his fictional character "Doc". The real "Doc" was a marine biologist whose book "Between Pacific Tides" published in 1939 is still the standard text for students of marine biology. Is it surprising then that these squalid canneries have transformed themselves into a marine biologist's heaven, the Monterey Bay Aquarium? Interested in this subject? Try this link for more of the same
About the author:
www.southwesttraveller.com
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Scientists Find Radioactive Fish In New Part Of VermontWPTZ The Champlain ValleyFRANKLIN, Vt. -- A new report finds fish in the northern part of Vermont are radioactive like the fish living in the waters near the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The significance of this finding is not just that these fish have radioactive ...and more » |
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