The South’s herring party is over

Small fish can have a big impact.

For thousands of winters, Atlantic herring coursed through the rivers of what is now North Carolina and Virginia, so abundant that locals could catch them by the bucketful to feed their families. As author and historian David Cecelski illustrates in the “Herring Week” series on his website, 19th-century fisheries set up mile-long seine nets on the tributaries of the Albemarle Sound, where men and women labored day and night to catch, cut, and salt hundreds of thousands of fish a season—so many herring that the surplus was sold as fertilizer.