Billion-Dollar Fish

The Untold Story of Alaska Pollock

Kevin M. Bailey (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

300 Seiten

2021
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-79217-0 (ISBN)

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Alaska pollock is everywhere. If you’re eating fish but you don’t know what kind it is, it’s almost certainly pollock. Prized for its generic fish taste, pollock masquerades as crab meat in california rolls and seafood salads, and it feeds millions as fish sticks in school cafeterias and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches at McDonald’s. That ubiquity has made pollock the most lucrative fish harvest in America—the fishery in the United States alone has an annual value of over one billion dollars. But even as the money rolls in, pollock is in trouble: in the last few years, the pollock population has declined by more than half, and some scientists are predicting the fishery’s eventual collapse.

In Billion-Dollar Fish, Kevin M. Bailey combines his years of firsthand pollock research with a remarkable talent for storytelling to offer the first natural history of Alaska pollock. Crucial to understanding the pollock fishery, he shows, is recognizing what aspects of its natural history make pollock so very desirable to fish, while at the same time making it resilient, yet highly vulnerable to overfishing. Bailey delves into the science, politics, and economics surrounding Alaska pollock in the Bering Sea, detailing the development of the fishery, the various political machinations that have led to its current management, and, perhaps most important, its impending demise. He approaches his subject from multiple angles, bringing in the perspectives of fishermen, politicians, environmentalists, and biologists, and drawing on revealing interviews with players who range from Greenpeace activists to fishing industry lawyers.

Seamlessly weaving the biology and ecology of pollock with the history and politics of the fishery, as well as Bailey’s own often raucous tales about life at sea, Billion-Dollar Fish is a book for every person interested in the troubled relationship between fish and humans, from the depths of the sea to the dinner plate.

Kevin M. Bailey is the founding director of the Man & Sea Institute, was affiliate professor for more than thirty years at the University of Washington and was formerly a senior scientist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Most recently, he is the author of Fishing Lessons: Artisanal Fisheries and the Future of Our Oceans, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

PrefacePrologue: Fishing Lessons
1 Introduction: White Gold Fever
2 A Historical Background: From an Inexhaustible Ocean to the Three-Mile Limit
3 Fishing the High Seas: Japan and the Soviet Union Develop the Harvest of Pollock in the Bering Sea
4 Americanization! The Rush for White Gold and the Developing Fishery
5 An Empty Donut Hole: The Great Collapse of a North Pacific Pollock Stock
6 Viking Invasion: Norway’s Link to the Pollock Industry
7 A New Fish on the Block: Advancing Knowledge of Pollock Biology
8 A New Ocean: Changing Concepts of Ocean Production and Management of Fisheries
9 Factories of Doom: The Pollock Fishing Industry Clashes with the Environment
10 All in the Family: Olympic Fishing and Domestic Strife in the Industry
11 Bridge over Troubled Water: Tranquility after the American Fisheries Act
12 Alaska Pollock’s Challenging Future
Appendix A: Terminology
Appendix B: Other Abbreviations

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	27.05.2021
Zusatzinfo	33 halftones, 7 line drawings
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	399 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Natur / Ökologie
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Naturführer
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Limnologie / Meeresbiologie
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geologie
ISBN-10	0-226-79217-X / 022679217X
ISBN-13	978-0-226-79217-0 / 9780226792170
Zustand	Neuware