The author of The Book of Sharks, Imagining Atlantis, and Encyclopedia of the Sea
turns his gaze to the tuna — one of the biggest, fastest, and
most highly evolved marine animals and the source of some of the
world’s most popular delicacies — now hovering on the brink
of extinction. In recent years, the tuna’s place on our palates
has come under scrutiny, as we grow increasingly aware of our own
health and the health of our planet. Here, Ellis explains how a fish
that was once able to thrive has become a commodity, in a book that
shows how the natural world and the global economy converge on our
plates.
The longest migrator of any fish species, an Atlantic northern bluefin
can travel from New England to the Mediterranean, then turn around and
swim back; in the Pacific, the northern bluefin can make a round-trip
journey from California to Japan. The fish can weigh in at 1,500 pounds
and, in an instant, pick up speed to fifty-five miles per hour.
But today the fish is the target of the insatiable sushi market,
particularly in Japan, where an individual piece can go for
seventy-five dollars. Ellis introduces us to the high-stakes world of
“tuna ranches,” where large schools of half-grown tuna are
caught in floating corrals and held in pens before being fattened,
killed, gutted, frozen, and shipped to the Asian market. Once on the
brink of bankruptcy, the world’s tuna ranches — in
Australia, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and North Africa
— have become multimillion-dollar enterprises. Experts warn that
the fish are dying out and environmentalists lobby for stricter
controls, while entire coastal ecosystems are under threat. The
extinction of the tuna would mean not only the end of several species
but dangerous consequences for the earth as a whole.
In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod, John Cole’s Striper, John Hersey’s Blues — and of course, Ellis’s own Great White Shark — this book will forever change the way we think about fish and fishing.
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Tuna
A Love Story
by Richard Ellis
Knopf,
2008
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a copy
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