Bottomfeeder: How the fish on our plates is killing our planet

Bottomfeeder: How the fish on our plates is killing our planet

by TarasGrescoe (Author)

Synopsis

There's simply no limit to the sins people will commit for a tasty meal. The Japanese are notorious for their trade in bluefin tuna, served up to diners at almost illegal prices, while newlyweds in Bangkok, Shanghai and Singapore devour a gelatinous soup made from poached abalone and fins hacked from living sharks. But surely there's no need for you to feel bad about ordering sea bass in a London restaurant? Unless, of course, you consider that you may well be enjoying one of the very last members of the species. And that's before you contemplate the chemicals being pumped into the farmed prawns and salmon that now fill supermarket shelves.In "Bottomfeeder", we follow Taras Grescoe on a year-long, round-the-world trip, as he eats his way from the top to the bottom of the food chain with one purpose in mind: to find out whether he can continue to eat such delicacies in good conscience. As well as painting a vivid and often hilarious picture of the fascinating people Taras encounters, "Bottomfeeder" explores the impact we are having on sea life by overfishing and draws our attention to some of the ethical choices we can make. At a time when many of the fish we take for granted are on the verge of extinction, we need to face the fact that very soon jellyfish sandwiches may be all that is left for us to eat.

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More Information

Format: Unabridged
Pages: 400
Edition: Main Market
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 20 Jun 2008

ISBN 10: 1405091835
ISBN 13: 9781405091831

Media Reviews
If you're a seafood lover, pick up this guide to which fish are the best for our bodies and which are best for the environment. --San Francisco Chronicle Research that brings muckraking books such as Fast Food Nation to mind. --Seattle Post-Intelligencer From pollutants to piracy, preservatives to Patagonian toothfish, Grescoe surveys the state of our collective waterways in Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, which combines some literal seabed muckraking with a fascinating travelogue...[An] aquatic The Omnivore's Dilemma. --Gothamist Fascinating...will inform many about the dire state of the oceans, expose the dreadful environmental consequences of badly managed aquaculture, and prompt us to make better seafood choices...With clear, compelling writing, Grescoe covers a vast array of topics ranging from ecology (e.g. how overfishing affects ecosystems), cooking and eating (a trip to a Japanese restaurant that serves whale meat), economics (the business of black-market cod), and history. --Ethicurean Grescoe takes us on an international tour of controversial cuisines -- shark fin soup in China, whale sashimi in Japan, monkfish tail in New York City -- meanwhile offering an overview of the corrupt practices that have put the oceans (and our health) in danger. The portrait he paints is grim: oceanic dead zones that, because of pollution and overfishing, can no longer support organic life; salmon farms polluted by pesticides and disease; ruthless bottom trawlers with nets that can destroy entire ecosystems. A warning is not a death sentence, however. The book empowers consumers to ask the right questions -- if the halibut isfrom the Atlantic or Pacific, for instance, and whether the lobster pasta is actually made from monkfish, which is endangered. And asking these questions will make it possible to enjoy seafood for years to come. --Salon.com Grescoe's tale hits all the right notes. It's an entree you'll remember. --Fortune Small Business In this whirlwind, worldwide tour of fisheries, Grescoe (The Devil's Picnic) whiplashes readers from ecological devastation to edible ecstasy and back again. --Publishers Weekly Bottomfeeder highlights the diversity, complexity, and fragility of our oceans. It's an important reminder that we all have to take better care of our oceans if we want seafood in our future. -- David Suzuki, co-founder, David Suzuki Foundation
Author Bio
Taras Grescoe is a prize-winning journalist, whose articles have appeared in The Times, the New York Times, the Independent and National Geographic Traveller. He is the author of The End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the Tourists, Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec and The Devil's Picnic: A Tour of Everything the Governments of the World Don't Want You to Try. He lives in Montreal.