Although fish and other things in the water fascinate me, I've never been much of a fisherman. I guess I don't have the patience. In fact the only time I think I've ever really been on a fishing trip was when I was pretty young (10 maybe?). I went out on a boat on the open water off the coast of Florida with my grandfather, his friend (it was the friend's boat), my mom and my brother(s) (I don't remember if my younger brother came along, it seems like he would have been too young). I remember stopping at the bait store to buy some squid for bait, and setting off for the open water. Despite my inexperience I did manage to catch a fish, as did my older brother, I think. My mom caught a baby shark, which either my grandfather or his friend clubbed to death before throwing it back into the water. When it came time for lunch my grandfather and his buddy reached into the bait cooler, and pulled out some squid, slapped it between two slices of bread and proceeded to chow down on it, offering it to my brother and I to see if we wanted to try it. Although we didn't try it, I guess you could say that was my first exposure to sushi.
In Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, Paul Greenberg explores the state of both the wild and farmed populations of four popular fish that grace the world's dinner tables: Salmon, Cod, Bass, and Tuna. He discusses the popularity of the fish, how they have come to be overfished, and whether the wild populations can recover. He educates us on the suitability of each fish to be farmed, how shortcomings of their suitability have been overcome by science, and how other less popular species would be far easier to raise in a domestic environment.
After reminiscing about how he came to love fishing as a child, Greenberg introduces us to the salmon. He talks about how the wild populations were decimated by overfishing and the damming of the rivers, which prevented the wild salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. He explains that their comparatively large eggs made them early candidates for commercial farming operations, and how at first selective breeding, and most recently genetic engineering have created "super-salmon" that are much more efficient than their wild cousins in turning feed into flesh. He outlines the environmental impact of industrial salmon farming, and the dangers of these domestic fish escaping into the general population (which they have).
Next he examines the bass, which is actually a name for a group of somewhat unrelated fish. The particular bass that Greenberg is interested in is the European Sea Bass. This fish had become rare through overfishing by early peoples of the Mediterranean. The value of this rarity gave people the incentive to overcome the many difficulties in raising these fish in captivity: Microscopic eggs, hormonal changes, and an extended spawning cycle. The innovations developed unlocked the secrets of fish reproduction in general, not just specifically for the European Sea Bass, and had applications for human fertility research as well.
Greenberg then looks at cod, a fish so plentiful when he was young that in his household (and many others) it was simply called "fish". That is to say, if you were having "fish" for dinner, you were having cod. Fast forward several billion Gorton's Fish Sticks and McDonald's Filet-o-Fish Sandwiches later, and many of the wild populations of this fish have collapsed. Greenberg discusses efforts to conserve the last of these wild populations, attempts to farm the fish, and efforts to find a possible replacement, which have already placed the wild populations of other species of fish in jeopardy.
Finally Greenberg looks at the tuna. He draws analogies between the hunting of this fish to extinction, and the similar fate that whales experienced before they became the darlings of the conservation world. He quashes the myth that Japan's tuna-as-sushi tradition is too well-entrenched to be reversed - actually prior to 1930's, they usually eschewed the heavy, oily fish for much lighter varieties. He also talks about the economic and logistical problems of raising these fish domestically, and how tuna "ranching," is actually doing great damage to the wild populations.
To wrap things up, Greenberg looks at some of the fish that actually do well in farm situations. He points to tilapia, tra, and barramundi as fish that are well suited to being raised domestically. He also lays guidelines not only for preserving wild fish, but for selecting new species to farm.
The length of my blog entries is usually directly proportional to how much I enjoyed the book, and obviously I enjoyed this book a great deal. Greenberg makes you feel his passion for fishing and the ocean, and makes rational arguments for sane fishing practices and domestic farming that take into account the economic realities of feeding the planet. If you are concerned about the health of our oceans and the abundance of food that grows in them, read this book.
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