Ccarlsson at 05:13, 21 May 2026

2026-05-21T05:13:01Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:13, 20 May 2026
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	''An excerpt from the book, [https://backcountrypress.com/book/san-francisco-bay-area/ ''San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History''], by David D. Schmidt (Backcountry Press, 2025).		''An excerpt from the book, [https://backcountrypress.com/book/san-francisco-bay-area/ ''San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History''], by David D. Schmidt (Backcountry Press, 2025).

	Italian fishermen were the first to fish for shrimp in San Francisco Bay in 1869. Beginning in 1871, however, Chinese fishermen with more efficient bag nets gained a competitive edge, so the Italians gave up on shrimp. But they and the other European fishermen were not about to let the Chinese compete for fish. They used threats and intimidation to make sure the Chinese fishers stuck with shrimp.		[[Fisherman's Wharf East of Telegraph Hill\|Italian fishermen]] were the first to fish for shrimp in San Francisco Bay in 1869. Beginning in 1871, however, Chinese fishermen with more efficient bag nets gained a competitive edge, so the Italians gave up on shrimp. But they and the other European fishermen were not about to let the Chinese compete for fish. They used threats and intimidation to make sure the Chinese fishers stuck with shrimp.

	Chinese shrimpers staked nets to the bottom of the bay like giant strainers, so that when the tides pushed water through the nets, shrimp and small fish were pushed against the nets and held there. Local demand for the three species of native bay shrimp was low, but the shrimpers prospered by sun-drying their catch and exporting it to China. They also ground up the shrimp shells for use as fertilizer.		Chinese shrimpers staked nets to the bottom of the bay like giant strainers, so that when the tides pushed water through the nets, shrimp and small fish were pushed against the nets and held there. Local demand for the three species of native bay shrimp was low, but the shrimpers prospered by sun-drying their catch and exporting it to China. They also ground up the shrimp shells for use as fertilizer.
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	''Excerpted from David D. Schmidt's ''San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History.'' Available from [https://backcountrypress.com/book/san-francisco-bay-area/ Backcountry Press].''		''Excerpted from David D. Schmidt's ''San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History.'' Available from [https://backcountrypress.com/book/san-francisco-bay-area/ Backcountry Press].''

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Ccarlsson: Created page with "''' Historical Essay ''' ''by David D. Schmidt, 2026'' ''An excerpt from the book, [https://backcountrypress.com/book/san-francisco-bay-area/ ''San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History''], by David D. Schmidt (Backcountry Press, 2025). Italian fishermen were the first to fish for shrimp in San Francisco Bay in 1869. Beginning in 1871, however, Chinese fishermen with more efficient b..."

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Created page with "''' Historical Essay ''' ''by David D. Schmidt, 2026'' ''An excerpt from the book, [https://backcountrypress.com/book/san-francisco-bay-area/ ''San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History''], by David D. Schmidt (Backcountry Press, 2025). Italian fishermen were the first to fish for shrimp in San Francisco Bay in 1869. Beginning in 1871, however, Chinese fishermen with more efficient b..."

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''' Historical Essay '''

''by David D. Schmidt, 2026''

''An excerpt from the book, [https://backcountrypress.com/book/san-francisco-bay-area/ ''San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History''], by David D. Schmidt (Backcountry Press, 2025).

Italian fishermen were the first to fish for shrimp in San Francisco Bay in 1869. Beginning in 1871, however, Chinese fishermen with more efficient bag nets gained a competitive edge, so the Italians gave up on shrimp. But they and the other European fishermen were not about to let the Chinese compete for fish. They used threats and intimidation to make sure the Chinese fishers stuck with shrimp.

Chinese shrimpers staked nets to the bottom of the bay like giant strainers, so that when the tides pushed water through the nets, shrimp and small fish were pushed against the nets and held there. Local demand for the three species of native bay shrimp was low, but the shrimpers prospered by sun-drying their catch and exporting it to China. They also ground up the shrimp shells for use as fertilizer.

By 1875 there were as many as 30 Chinese shrimp camps along the shores of the bay, each with its own boats, docks, and living quarters, supporting a total of about 1,500 people. The camps, run by exporters in San Francisco's Chinatown, landed an average of 7,000 pounds of shrimp per boat each day. In the 1880s and 1890s, the annual shrimp catch was about 5 million pounds.

The success of the shrimpers stirred hostility among the European fishers, who often blamed the Chinese when salmon weren’t plentiful. The Chinese, they claimed, caught large quantities of baby fish in their shrimp nets. Eyewitnesses had seen discarded small fish at the shrimp camps, but the species were never identified. According to fisheries historian Arthur McEvoy, the decline of Bay-Delta fisheries in the late 1800s was caused by

<blockquote>. . . random climatic change and the massive degradation of the Sacramento watershed's ecology [by mining, farming, logging, and diking of wetlands] which inflicted far more damage on those fisheries than the relatively minor impact of Chinese fishing."(1)</blockquote>

In 1880, during a peak of anti-Chinese agitation, the state legislature outlawed shrimp fishing by Chinese people, but the law was soon overturned by Justice Lorenzo Sawyer of the U.S. Circuit Court in the case of In ''re Ah Chong et al., 6 C.C.D.C. (Sawyer) 451'' (1880). Sawyer was the judge who four years later ruled against hydraulic mines in the Sierra.

In 1897, there were 26 Chinese shrimp camps around the bay. Some became permanent villages with up to a dozen boats, docks, and over 100 residents, like China Camp near San Rafael, Hunters Point in San Francisco, and Point Molate, west of Richmond.

[[Image:2FisheriesShrimpCamp.jpg]]

'''A Chinese shrimp camp with nets out to dry on the East Bay shoreline west of Richmond, c. 1900.'''

''Photo: BANC PIC 1905.17500—ALBv.46:206h, Chinese in California 1850-1925, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.''

In 1901, the state began annually closing the shrimp fishery during May through August, supposedly to protect juvenile fish. But the timing of the closure coincided with the dry season, and was designed to hinder the shrimpers, who sun-dried most of their catch. In 1905 the state banned shrimp exports to China. Smuggling, however, continued to make the fishery profitable until 1911, when the state banned the Chinese fishers' bag nets. This nearly shut down the shrimp fishery—until 1915, when the nets were legalized again, but only south of Yerba Buena Island (a boundary today marked by the Bay Bridge). Since the commercial salmon and striped bass fishers found their best fishing spots in the North Bay and Delta, this was believed to harm fewer juvenile fish.

After 1915, most of the [[Chinese shrimping village|Chinese shrimpers operated from docks on Hunters Point]], the southeastern tip of San Francisco. The ban on shrimp exports ended in 1919, but was replaced with a ban on drying more than half of a day's catch. To continue exporting, the shrimpers had to sell half of their catch fresh, locally. They sold it so cheaply that many San Francisco restaurants served bay shrimp as a free appetizer.

[[Image:2FisheriesShrimpCamp2.jpg]]

'''Chinese shrimp fishers and baskets filled with shrimp at bayside shrimp camp, c. 1900.'''

''Photo: Shrimp Fishermen. BANC PIC 1905.17500.29:128-ALB, Roy D. Graves Pictorial Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.''

Despite these restrictions, the shrimp catch reached a post-1900 peak of 3.4 million pounds in 1935. At this time, over 99% of California's shrimp catch came from the bay. In the late 1930s, however, the Japanese invasion of China disrupted shrimp exports. With little demand for dried shrimp in the U.S., the Bay Area catch dwindled to a little less than a million pounds by 1941, when the Navy evicted most of the remaining shrimpers to expand the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. World War II made shrimp exports to China impossible. The catch plunged to just 253,000 pounds in 1943. The shrimpers brought in a post-war high of more than a million pounds in 1948, only to suffer two fatal blows in the 1950s.

"In the '50s, everything started going to heck," remembered shrimp fisherman Frank A. Quan in 2003. "There used to be tons of shrimp—and mussels and clams and flounder. It's sad, to watch it all die in front of you." Quan, born in 1925 at the fishing village now preserved in China Camp State Park, on the bay shore east of San Rafael, was a lifelong shrimp fisherman. By the early 2000s, he was the last shrimper on the bay. He was also the last resident of that village, living there until his death in 2016 at the age of 90.(2) After 2000, he was catching only 40 to 50 pounds per day, a pitiful 1% of a good day's catch in the late 1940s. The shrimp decline coincided with the large-scale diversion of fresh water from the Bay-Delta to the federal Central Valley Project's aqueduct starting in 1951.

In the early 1950s, DFG biologists discovered abundant stocks of bigger, plumper species of shrimp and prawns in the ocean outside the Golden Gate. Commercial fishermen based at Fisherman’s Wharf quickly began exploiting the new resource. By 1952, most of the Bay Area's shrimp catch came from the ocean. By about 1960, the last of the Hunters Point shrimp camps was gone.

China Camp State Park, established in the late 1970s, preserves the bay’s last shrimp camp. None of the original Chinese sailboats survived, but in the late 1990s John Muir, a distant relative of the Sierra Club founder, excavated a rotting hull from the mud at China Camp, and carefully studied its construction. He then went to China to observe how such boats are built. As curator of small craft for the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in the early 2000s, Muir and a crew of volunteers built a 42-foot replica of the Chinese shrimp junks of the late 1800s. The boat is exhibited at China Camp during the summer, and the rest of the year at San Francisco’s Hyde Street pier.

[[Image:2ChinaCampPier1.jpg]]

'''China Camp State Park, 2000.'''

''Photo: David D. Schmidt''

''Questions? Email the author: davidnaturesf@gmail.com''

'''Notes'''

1. McEvoy, Arthur F., ''The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980'' (Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 103.

2. ''San Francisco Chronicle'' Obituary, “Frank A. Quan,” Aug. 24, 2016.

<hr>

[[Image:SFBay-History-WEB2-360x570.jpg|240px|left]]

''Excerpted from David D. Schmidt's ''San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History.'' Available from [https://backcountrypress.com/book/san-francisco-bay-area/ Backcountry Press].''

[[category:Food]] [[category:Ecology]] [[category:Chinese]] [[category:Bayview/Hunter's Point]] [[category:Mission Bay]] [[category:Marin County]] [[category:East Bay]] [[category:Book Excerpts]] [[category:1850s]] [[category:1860s]] [[category:1870s]] [[category:1880s]] [[category:1890s]] [[category:1900s]] [[category:1930s]] [[category:1950s]] [[category:2000s]]

Chinese Shrimp Camps Along The Bay - Revision history

Ccarlsson at 05:13, 21 May 2026