IV-533 



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

 Spanish fishermen were exploring the North Atlantic fishery re- 

 sources including those in the Gulf of Maine and along Georges 

 Bank; 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 in 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 it living in 

 primarily urban areas which form about ten percent of the total 

 estuarine zone area. Another 13 percent of the estuarine land 

 area is 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 country, 



