The Aquatic Frontier

"Hanes's gift for summary and analysis means this book is portable. People from fields beyond history—anthropology, political science, geography, hopefully even fisheries managers—will find this version of history easy to digest."—Matthew Morse Booker, author of Down by the Bay: San Francisco's History between the Tides

"Hanes builds upon the foundational scholarship of several relevant fields, including environmental history, in interesting ways while also effectively drawing upon unused or under-utilized archival resources."—Christine Keiner, author of The Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay since 1880

"This volume is an interesting blend of history, economics, and science, in which Hanes manages to merge these disparate fields into an effective study of early environmental advocacy."—CHOICE

"Samuel Hanes focuses on oysters and the in-between world of estuaries to examine several poorly documented issues . . . One of Hanes's strengths is synthesizing local stories into regional patterns for New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Chesapeake without flattening the fishery's ethnic, class, and technological tensions."—Environmental History

"This book is not just useful to historians of maritime environments but to any scholar looking at how social, cultural, and political forces affect resource management."—H-Net Reviews