Allan Moses in which he was described as "our Grand Manan ornithologist", who "makes birds his specialty and his pastime". John Thomas Moses died in 1885. His son John Russell Moses, born in 1853, was Allan Moses's father. John Russell Moses learned taxidermy from his father and continued to build the family collection of mounted bird specimens, while prospering as a businessman. He was one of Grand Manan's major fish buyers, with a processing plant in North Head. Part of his business was selling the dried swim bladders of hake for the manufacture of isinglass. This was highly profitable, as the bladders
Dried and salted cod what is now Canada and claimed it for France, he noted the presence of a thousand Basque boats fishing for cod. Salt cod formed a vital item of international commerce between the New World and the Old, and formed one leg of the so-called triangular trade. Thus it spread around the Atlantic and became a traditional ingredient not only in Northern European cuisine, but also in Mediterranean, West African, Caribbean, and Brazilian cuisines. The drying of food is the world's oldest known preservation method, and dried fish has a storage life of several years. Traditionally, salt cod was dried only