Date: Fri, 30 Jan 98 7:07:23 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Ecology and the American Indian






		C. Jerry,




	The unpolluted shoreline is indeed a vast source of possible
foods.  Then you eat them and they are gone for quite a while.  All those
critters take time to grow back.  Also, you have to gather them
individually.  So, The Peqouts and whoever else did supplement their diets
with gathered sea life - seasonally.  They also had to spend a great deal
of time at the task of gathering, and they had to move around from place
to place when they had exhausted stocks enough to make gathering
inefficient.  Fishermen with nets living on very advantageous places like
river mouths could stay put and set their nets most of the year.  This has
obvious advantages.  They could build better shelter against the elements. 
They could create storehouses to defend their surplus from weather and
animals.  Vulnerable parts of the community like children, the elderly and
pregnant women could be spared teh rigors of travel.



	Fishing with a net gather sfood from the nutrient streams in the
currents off shore.  These currents replenish themselves constantly. 
Creatures from far away are drawn to these currents and compete to stay in
them.  That is why putting a net in them catches a lot of fish, year after
year, week in, week out.  Obviously you can take any harvesting too far,
but it took us at least a century to fish out the Grand Banks.  Fishing
with nets is also energetically economical.  You set your nets and go do
somewthing else (like set other nets put out set-lines, which are
functionally a form of net). Then you haul in the catch. The only
practical limits on the size of the net are how much space you have to set
it and whether you can haul it in without breaking.  






	This is why, comrade, ancient people took all that time to weave
nets.  They work like crazy.  




	peace




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