Four Fish
Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
An exploration of four common fish driven by a personal narrative of fishing for them. Along the way current trends in aquaculture, genetic research, alternative fish types, and legislation are explained. Human greed and fisherman psychology seem to a driving force behind how we got to where we are today with fishing and it seems that without drastic measures nothing will change. The author doesn't advocate ceasing fishing as some other authors have. Instead the author recommends starting over thinking about what we eat using Francis Galton's criteria: hardy, endowed with an inborn liking for man, comfort-loving, able to breed freely, and needful of only a minimal amount of tending. Making strong international policy changes to: profoundly reduce fishing, create large no-catch areas, protect unmanageable species, and protect the bottom of the food chain. With those in mind he advocates creating a fishing industry build around: efficiency, nondestructive to wild systems, limited in number, adaptable, and functional in a polyculture.
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