18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JULY 23-29, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com In his first book, author and chef Joseph Ogilvy writes the definitive history of fishing along the California coast. By Pam Marino A Fine Kettle of Fish It was an aside in a book about the history of fertilizer, plus a memory of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, that awoke an intense curiosity in the mind of chef and author Joseph Ogilvy and led him down a five-year journey of discovery. The result is a thoughtful and comprehensive book on the history of California’s fishing industry, its role in thrusting the yet-to-be-created state into world commerce and how it forever changed the once abundant coastline. Tin Can Coast: A History of Industry, Greed, and Fishing in the Golden State, Ogilvy’s first book and certainly not his last, is a fascinating, well-researched and beautifully written tale that starts at nearly the beginning of time stretching forward to the present, including how the first humans found their way to the California Current, which he describes in the prologue as “1,900 miles of the most productive waters on earth, drifting slowly down the West Coast of the United States, slate gray and spumed with surf under the fog, or Prussian blue and dappled with windblown troughs, glinting under the sunlight.” The Current is a main character of the book, along with its creatures—sea otters, abalone and sardines— as well as the humans that saw those creatures as commodities to be exploited for trade and amassing wealth. Chapter 1 begins with a stark piece of history: The price of entry for California’s arrival into the modern world was 40,000 otter pelts, 40,000 naked carcasses abandoned on the granite and sand of the California shore. Otters were hunted into near extinction, their prized fur shipped around the world. Along the way the men who hunted them changed the fabric of the lives of Indigenous people who themselves hunted sea otters for their pelts, but for their own use and within limits. That otters nearly became extinct created a domino effect that impacted the balance of nature. Today’s fishing industry has roots that go back centuries to when the first people sailed across the north Pacific and rode the California Current in search of food. Joseph Ogilvy became fascinated with the history of California’s fisheries, leading him on a year-long journey of discovery. DANIEL DREIFUSS HUXLEY OGILVY
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==