“For all that anyone knew, it had always been the same. About the first of July of each year (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) ALBACORE arrived at the Coronado Islands in Mexican waters just south of San Diego. In three weeks they worked their way up the California coast.
By September they had worked their way back to the Coronados. Then, when the skipjack appeared, the albacore disappeared.
Albacore was the choicest of the tuna fish and a whole industry had grown up (since 1906) with a rising demand for its favored white, tasty meat.
But in 1926 the Summer albacore “run“ began to just NOT HAPPEN!?! The albacore catch in 1925 was more than 22,000,000 pounds, but in 1926 albacore caught off the California coast dwindled to a little less than 2,500,000 pounds (-88.6%! – ed.). The total rose somewhat in 1927, but 1928 was the poorest on record, with less than 300,000 pounds taken (-98.6%!! – ed.) in coastal waters! The year 1929 was even worse (less than 130,000 pounds! -99.4%!!!). Clearly, SOMETHING *NEW* HAD TO BE DONE, or else the U.S. tuna fishing industry was surely “doomed”.
And so it DID! Fishermen learned from their fruitless chase of the albacore that the farther south they went the richer the fishing for YELLOWFIN and SKIPJACK, which were steadily growing in importance. An advertising campaign successfully stimulated the acceptability of “LIGHT-meat” instead of “WHITE-meat” (aka. albacore) tuna. Perhaps even more importantly, fishermen discovered in their invasion of the southern seas that they NO LONGER have to be tied to SEASONS in the taking yellowfin and skipjack. As such, tuna fishing could now become a ~YEAR-ROUND~ endeavor, a paradigm shift!
In the Spring of 1929 the 112′ tuna clipper “ATLANTIC” with M. O. MEDINA as Captain and JOE MARQUES as Engineer, led four (curiously unnamed!? – JLM) sister vessels past Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Lower California, past Cocos Island off the coast of Central America, and drew up at the fabled GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador in South America and more than 3,000 miles from their San Diego home. There they found the grandest tuna fishing grounds of them all!
***In a few years the fishing fleet had established a pattern of operation. A study by the California Bureau of Marine Fisheries reported that from November to the end of February, the fleet exploited the Galapagos Islands. Through March, April and May the boats fished off the Central American mainland. In June and July they often fished in the Gulf of California and around Cape San Lucas, and in August and September the fleet scattered along the Lower California coast and the neighboring banks and islands as far as Clipperton Island. Through the Fall they mostly reverted to the Central American mainland. And then they began the cycle again with the coming of winter…, tuna fishing YEAR-AROUND! ~BOOM~!!!
This pattern would continue until the late 1950s, under continous pressure from IMPORTED tariff-free frozen tuna, mostly from JAPAN, which later forced the U.S. tuna fishing fleet to CONVERT to nylon-netted, power-block equipped *PURSE-SEINING* to successfully compete!
(*Source: Book – “The Rising Tide, 1920-1940” – Chapter 5)