More Summer Reading
July 31st, 2010I just learned about two new books for summer reading. Both address environmental issues, but in vastly different manners. I first learned about Four Fish by Paul Greenberg when Kyle Rabin (former Executive Director of Friends of the Bay, and now a Director at the Network for New Energy Choices) sent me a link to an online interview on National Public Radio. The book is reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and it sounds like a must read for anyone concerned with the sustainability of the global fisheries market, and the health of the oceans themselves. Greenberg, who is a dedicated fisherman who grew up in Connecticut and fishes Long Island Sound, examines the relationship humans have with tuna, cod, sea bass and salmon.
In an excerpt posted online at npr.org Greenberg explains why he chose these four fish – “The more I thought of it, the more I realized that the four fish that are coming to dominate the modern seafood market are visible footprints, marking four discrete steps humanity has taken in its attempts to master the sea. Each fish is an archive of a particular, epochal shift. Salmon, a beautiful silvery animal with succulent pink flesh, is dependent upon clean, free-flowing freshwater rivers. It is representative of the first wave of human exploitation, the species that marks the point at which humans and fish first had large-scale environmental problems and where domestication had to be launched to head off extinction. Sea bass, a name applied to many fish but which increasingly refers to a single white, meaty-fleshed animal called the European sea bass, represents the near-shore shallow waters of our coasts, the place where Europeans first learned how to fish in the sea and where we also found ourselves outstripping the resources of nature and turning to an even more sophisticated form of domestication to maintain fish supplies. Cod, a white, flaky-fleshed animal that once congregated in astronomical numbers around the slopes of the continental shelves many miles offshore, heralded the era of industrial fishing, an era where mammoth factory ships were created to match cod’s seemingly irrepressible abundance and turn its easily processed flesh into a cheap commoner’s staple. And finally tuna, a family of lightning-fast, sometimes thousand-pound animals with red, steaklike flesh that frequent the distant deepwater zones beyond the continental slope. Some tuna cross the breadth of the oceans, and nearly all tuna species range across waters that belong to multiple nations or no nation at all. Tuna are thus stateless fish, difficult to regulate and subject to the last great gold rush of wild food — a sushi binge that is now pushing us into a realm of science-fiction-level fish-farming research and challenging us to reevaluate whether fish are at their root expendable seafood or wildlife desperately in need of our compassion.”
It sounds like a beautifully written book about a very important topic – the sustainability of the fish harvest and the protection of endangered ocean going species like tuna. These are difficult problem that has to be solved by a cooperative effort of maritime nations, and have no easy answers. Sustainable aquaculture, such as the clam and oyster farming conducted in Oyster Bay, may be the answer for some species.
Star Island is Carl Hiaasen’s new book. Hiaasen writes outrageous murder mysteries, which usually skewer corrupt politicians, developers and others who seek to damage the environment. In this book, he takes on the cult of celebrity and paparazzis, but from the reviews I have read he manages to involve the environment by having Skink (an ex-governor of Florida who now lives in the mangrove swamps and lives on roadkill – I told you these books are outrageous) enlist a celebrity stand in to assault a tour bus full of real-estate speculators. The book sounds like it will be full of Hiaasen’s trademark chaos. It sounds like a great late summer beach read.