Overfishing has been part of the human relationship with rivers, lakes, and oceans as long as there have been people taking food from the water. As has happened with most of the natural resources of the world, man has developed a pattern of depleting the supply in one area and then moving to another to repeat the pattern. It is the purpose of this paper to illustrate the effects of overfishing along the East Coast of North America in order to provide a history of the problem, demonstrate the effects of overfishing, and suggest remedies.