“Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food” by Paul Greenberg  333.956 GR (also eBook, downloadable audiobook)

In between self-deprecating, humorous personal anecdotes Greenberg portrays a very serious depletion of four types of fish from all the oceans and seas.  They have dominated our modern seafood market and are salmon, tuna, bass, and cod, all of which used to be quite numerous indeed.  So the reader alternates between groans of concern and chuckles of rueful recognition.

First sentence: “In 1978 all the fish I cared about died.”  Greenberg proceeds to write about subsistence fishing, sport fishing, dams, water pollution, the fishing industry (both wild fish and farmed fish), what fish to order at a restaurant and fish-related lore.   As for farmed fish, he uses 19th century intellectual Francis Galton’s rules for domestication: 1) hardy, 2) endowed with an inborn liking for man, 3) comfort-loving, 4) able to breed freely, 5) needful of only a minimal amount of tending.  There are 4 primary meat-producing domesticated mammals (sheep, goats, pigs, cattle); similarly, there are 4 primary meat-producing birds (chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese).   Salmon adapt to a farmed environment, but the others not so easily.  Greenberg suggests not trying to farm bass and going with a fish called “tra” of the genus Pangasius which may already be the most productive food fish on earth if records from Vietnamese growers and government officials are to be believed.  But have you ever seen “tra”  on a restaurant menu?  One ominous factor overrides everything Greenberg writes about: Human Demand.

Greenberg’s descriptions of fish and their watery environment are magnificent.  Fish are beautiful and scary in their power and mystery.  I really got a much greater appreciation for fish from reading this book.

A book that Greenberg referenced several times was “Cod” by Mark Kurlansky 333.95 KU.