The hidden story of the California Coast, told through generations of immigrants, surges of industry, and three marine species caught in the dragnet of human history.

Look west from San Francisco or Monterey, past the surfers and cargo ships. This is the California Current, 1,900 miles of the most productive waters on earth. It was here that 18th-century Natives knew frisbee-sized abalone mollusks, sardine schools the size of buses, and Yellowfin tuna, each the size of a man. But it was not to last.

Over the next three centuries, the abalone, sardine, and tuna were swept into the violent undertow of history. Their species became resources. They drove the Spanish-Russian land war of the 18th century, California's virulently racist first “conservation” laws in the 19th, and an ad campaign that kept America fed on just-like-chicken canned goods in the 20th. Along the way, they became drivers of geopolitical competition, catalysts for the dramatic rise and fall of Cannery Row aristocracy, and even surly muses for John Steinbeck and Fritz Lang.

Collapsing the distinctions between human and natural history, Tin Can Coast brings the cautionary tale of the California shore to life.