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GAP YEAR ROYAL
Taking a gap year is the fashionable thing to do! Prince Harry
took a gap year between finishing his A-levels and starting a
career in the army. He spent three months in Australia (starting
with the Rugby World Cup) and then three months working...
South African Whale-Watching Hotspot
Hermanus is the only place in the world that has its own whale crier. The months of June through to November are peak whale-watching season, and the Southern Right whales come to entertain from their favourite place in the Bay. This popular holiday...
The Rias Altas in Spain
The Rias Altas located in Spain are part of a group of larger formations spread within the coast of Galicia, conformed by the Rias Altas and the Rias Bajas. The Rias are estuaries origin when sea levels rise as well as they can be created by other...
Tofino, BC Canada Beach Paradise on Canada's "Big Island"
British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing tourism hotspots in North America. The reason, like so many other tourism Meccas, is landscape. In BC you will find high desert, mountains, long...
Travelers with Disabilities: The Untapped Market
When most people think about accommodating people with disabilities in their business they get a scared feeling in their gut and their mind scrambles to search for that all-important date when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) went into...
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The Japanese Started cannery row
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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