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Mariana Archipelago: Historical Overview of the Fisheries
After the US
acquired Guam in 1898, it held training programs to encourage local
residents to participate in offshore commercial fishing. However, the
native people lacked the capital to purchase and maintain large enough
boats, so inshore fishing continued to be a subsistence base for native
people. During the Japanese rule (1914–1944), the Chamoru and Refaluwasch
continued to rely heavily on subsistence use of inshore species. After
WWII, the US military assisted several Guam villages to develop an inshore
commercial net and trap fishery. Wage
work enabled some fishermen to acquire small boats with outboard engines
and other equipment for offshore fishing. The
first year a pelagic species was included in a catch report to the postwar
Guam civilian government was 1956. As
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Prehistoric
Chamoru harvested sea turtles, shellfish and invertebrates and likely
sharks and dolphins. Under Spanish colonization in the 1600s, destruction
of large canoes and canoe houses led to the loss of pelagic fishing.
By the mid-19th century only 24 outrigger canoes remained on Guam for
fishing inside the reef only. Under European colonization, the number
of Chamoru in the Mariana Archipelago was drastically reduced from an
estimated 40,000 persons in the late 17th century to about 1,500 persons
a hundred years later. Inshore fishing for invertebrates and reef fish
and reef gleaning were the main means for obtaining marine protein. 
Refaluwasch
(Carolinians) settled on Saipan in the 1840s. They are known for their
seafaring and fishing skills. Fishing centered on lagoon and reef species.
They sometimes paddled small canoes to fish a short distance outside
the reef. 
late as the 1970s, relatively few people in Guam fished offshore, even
on the protected leeward side of the island, because boats and deep-sea
fishing equipment were too expensive for most people. In
the 1970s, a group of Vietnamese refugees on Guam fished commercially
for reef fish, bottomfish, tuna and mackerel. The Guam Fishermen’s
Cooperative Association began operations during that time. Until the co-op established a small
marketing facility at the Public Market in Agana, fishermen were forced
to make their own individual marketing arrangements after returning
from fishing trips. In 1980, the co-op acquired a chill box and
ice machine, and emphasized wholesaling. Today, the co-op’s membership
includes more than 180 full-time and part-time fishermen, and it processes
and markets (retail and wholesale) an estimated 80% of the local commercial
catch. In
CNMI, several boats over 25 feet in length were actively engaged in
commercial fishing by 1980, primarily for bottomfish and pelagic species.
However, most of the fishermen in the Mariana Archipelago continue to
harvest primarily for subsistence, barter and cultural sharing purposes,
such as for fiestas and food exchanges with family and friends.