October 7, 2015

Did you know that you may be a deltiologist?  Would your next question be, just what in the heck is that?

As it turns out, I may be one too, and I had thought that I just liked many of the images which can be found on old postcards.

Deltiology is the study and collection of postcards, and of course a deltiologist is one who collects. If you do, you are far from being alone. It is the third largest collecting hobby after stamp and coin collecting.

How about that?

I am particularly drawn to images relating to natural history and wildlife, and even more so to vintage hunting and fishing scenes.

My collection is not that big, and I don’t know all that much about the collecting field in itself. My only real motive to this point is that I bought them because I like them. I suspect that some of the images are rare. No doubt, some are not. Most are completely fascinating, at least to me.

I do know that picture postcards fall into categories based on the time period produced and published. The years 1898 to 1919 are considered to be the Golden Age of Postcards, followed by Linen Postcards (1930-1950), and the Modern Chromes (after 1940). There are further differentiations within these categories.

I found this particular postcard in a second-hand store, and I was astounded at the sheer size of the fish. My first reaction was to wonder – were they real?

Well, of course they are, and it is not an optical illusion. Photoshop and other photo manipulation programs had yet to be imagined.

But what about these magnificent fish? Could the largest of them depicted here really have weighed in at 320 pounds?

The postcard simply states “A Catch of Black Sea Bass”, and that would appear to be quite an understatement for fish of this size.  It is a species that until this time I was completely unfamiliar with, and that in itself was a big surprise. But then again, I was born and raised on the East Coast, and they are found primarily off of the coast of California, and south into Mexico.

Obviously, they would not be an easy fish to miss, though their true name is the Giant (Black) Sea Bass. To this day very little is know about their biology and habits. They may be capable of reaching lengths of up to seven or eight feet, and one specimen was reported to have weighed nearly 800 pounds. Now that’s a fish that can really get your attention, which sometimes is not such a good thing.

By 1915 both commercial and sport fisherman had taken their toll on the population. By 1935 most commercial fishing was no longer viable, and by the 1970’s they had all but disappeared. Finally, in 1981 the state of California closed all fishing for the Giant Sea Bass, although no official conservation status has ever been designated.

Postcards can be difficult to date. This one was easy, since the postmark tells us that it was posted in 1909. And we know that the charter was by the Office Meteor Boat Company, which was an established company on Catalina Island at the time. One must wonder if the participants ever had an idea that the best sport fishing years were nearly at an end?

No one knows yet if the king of the kelp forest  will ever make a full recovery, but from what I can gather there is still hope. Until then, we may have to be content with known historical reports and the photographic record, such as it is.

And that’s another great reason to collect postcards…

Posted by Michael Patrick McCarty

Read More About The Giant Sea Bass Here

https://steemit.com/fishing/@huntbook/memories-of-the-giant-sea-bass-the-king-of-the-kelp-forest