It was not until as recent as living memory that humans along the Gulf Coast started commercially fishing Redfish to any great extent, and by that time, fishing technology had advanced far enough to potentially outpace the ability of the Redfish populations to sustain themselves. Much, much later after a great deal of that history was lost to the steamroller of European colonization and the ravages of time, Redfish remained a subsistence fish for the newer inhabitants that spoke Spanish, French, and, later still, English. (For a bit of context, humans have probably been eating Redfish longer than humans have been growing crops.) For most of those millenia, people exploited Redfish in a more or less subsistence fashion, and undoubtedly there existed a rich tapestry of techniques for the use and preservation of this very handy fish. While this certainly isn’t the earliest evidence of humans eating seafood - that would be a quarter of a million years earlier - it nonetheless demonstrates that humans and Redfish have a long history indeed. More than likely, humans living along what we call the Gulf of Mexico have been eating Redfish for 14,000 years (or more). (Note: throughout this post, when the word “redfish” is capitalized, it refers to a specific species otherwise, the word refers to undifferentiated fish lumped under a handy common name) In fact redfish itself is a whole lot more than one fish. But redfish can be a lot more than blackened (just ask the Italians). Most Americans know Redfish for one thing - the blackened fish dish made famous in the 1980's by Paul Prudhomme in New Orleans, and since replicated in restaurants across the US.
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