11-28 



Long before the settlement of Plymouth, British, French, and 

 Spanish fishermen v/ere exploring the North Atlantic fishery resources 

 including those in the Gulf of Maine and along Georges Rank; after 

 colonization of New England, the fisheries were the sustaining 

 industry that provided the economic foundation for growth and 

 development. The estuaries were also the entry portal for the 

 immigrants that came to this Nation looking for the land of 

 opportunity. 



As the population grew, the relative importance of the fishery 

 progressively declined as economic growth in other industries 

 outstripped the demand for seafood as a staple diet item. The 

 growth of industrial and population centers in the estuarine zone 

 closely paralleled the growth of the rest of the Nation, with the 

 estuarine zone becoming relatively more important in international 

 commerce and less important 1n agricultural food production than the 

 interior of the country. 



The coastal counties contain only 15 percent of the land area 

 of the United States, but within this area is concentrated 33 

 percent of the Nation's population, with about four-fifths of 1t 

 living 1n primarily urban areas which form about ten percent of 

 the total estuarine zone area. Another 13 percent of the estuarine 

 land area 1s farmland, but this accounts for only four percent 

 of the total agricultural land of the Nation. The estuarine zone, 

 then, is nearly twice as densely populated as the rest of the 



