"After much prayerful consideration, I feel that I must say I have climbed my last political mountain."George C. Wallace
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Bird Safaris: Timbavati's Most Desired Plumage
Normally when you think Safari you think Big 5. The spotlight or limelight is traditionally on lions, cheetah or elephants. But when do the birds get some of the attention? With outlandish names like the Chestnut-Vented Tit-Babbler and the Jameson's ...
Grand Teton National Park - Wyoming
Located in northwestern Wyoming, Grand Teton National Park lies in the heart of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem - the largest, intact natural environment outside of Alaska. Adorned with glaciers and snowfields, the Teton Range is unquestionably the ...
Panama City Beach: The Undiscovered Getaway
Panama City Beach is a great place to find a good traditional family vacation; this beautiful city offers colorful amusement parks, arcades, miniature golf, souvenir shops and a big, beautiful beach. You will have a wide choice of accommodations, ranging ...
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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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