Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
getation was typical of tundra. These early peoples probably camped here to exploit the seasonal migration of
woodland caribou, which were extirpated from Nova Scotia only in the 1920s.
Later peoples turned to the sea to make their living. This so-called Maritime Archaic culture is best known
from Newfoundland and Labrador, where it may be traced back more than eight thousand years, but Memorial
University of Newfoundland archaeologist James A. Tuck believes that it embraced the entire Atlantic coast
from northern New England to northern Labrador. They had developed a very sophisticated sea-hunting tech-
nology, which included barbed and toggle-type harpoons. Sites in northern Maine, dating to 4,500 bp, include
bones from swordfish, gray and harbor seals, walrus, codfish, sturgeon, various seabirds, and, at one site, the
extinct sea mink. They also harvested land mammals—primarily deer, moose, bear, and beaver—using lances
with bone and ground-slate tips.
At about the same time, farther south in Chesapeake Bay, Native Americans began exploiting a variety of
shellfish, including oysters, softshell clams, marsh periwinkles, and ribbed mussels. They also began planned
burning of the forests, a practice that boosted browse plants for white-tailed deer, which furnished most of the
meat in their diet.
There are wild places that, although accessible, remain essentially unknowable, such as the great Bird Rock
at Cape St. Mary's, Newfoundland, divided from human contact by an aerial chasm both physical and experi-
ential. In Wild America, no less a naturalist than Roger Tory Peterson and his companion British birder James
Fisher enthused about the spectacle that they beheld there:
Circumventing the noisy kittiwake slab we finally reached the gannets, whose great stack (350 feet) is
connected with the 400-foot mainland cliff only by a low impassable ridge. What a wonderful show they
put on for us! Thousands of birds, with a wingspread of six feet, covered the top and sides of the stack.
I have experienced the same exhilarating feeling at the Cape St. Mary's gannetry, which has grown in size
since Peterson visited it in 1953. Both on land and at sea, however, the vitality and composition of ecosystems
have been altered by four centuries of resource exploitation, primarily forestry and fishing, but also farming,
and by burgeoning population growth and the accompanying loss and pollution of inshore habitat. The pattern
first documented in Europe has been repeated on this side of the Atlantic: depletion of freshwater resources,
followed by decimation of the inshore and eventually the offshore resources—a trend that inevitably landed
Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English fishers and whalers on North American shores. The damage caused
to the original ecosystem of the North Atlantic is likely to be exacerbated by climate change and its effects, in-
cluding sea level rise, which is already significantly altering the shape and character of the Atlantic coastline.
Although much has already been lost, much of the natural heritage of the region has also been retained and,
in some cases, has even been recovered in recent decades. For example, one hundred years ago, three-quarters
of New England was cleared and under cultivation; today, the opposite is true, with forests covering 75 percent
of the landscape. Looking seaward, the picture is less encouraging: recent studies carried out by Dalhousie
University marine scientists in Halifax, on the doorstep of the Atlantic, show that, worldwide, the populations
of all large predatory fishes—swordfish, salmon, and tuna, for example, as well as whales, sharks, and sea
turtles—fell by 90 percent within fifty years of the onset of industrialized fishing. The numbers of northern
cod, which so impressed John Cabot, are even bleaker, as the current biomass is only 10 percent of historical
stocks. At the same time, some seabird populations, as well as some seal and whale species, have been brought
back from the brink of extinction by concerted conservation efforts. Whether the Atlantic can regain its former
fecundity will depend, in large measure, on our continued commitment to changing our own behavior as the
ocean's beneficiaries and stewards.
