Fisheries & Aquaculture Books

The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America's Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town

Mark Kurlansky

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The bestselling author of Cod, Salt, and The Big Oyster has enthralled readers with his incisive blend of culinary, cultural, and social history. Now, in his most colorful, personal, and important book to date, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a disappearing way of life: fishing–how it has thrived in and defined one particular town for centuries, and what its imperiled future means for the rest of the world.

The culture of fishing is vanishing, and consequently, coastal societies are changing in unprecedented ways. The once thriving fishing communities of Rockport, Nantucket, Newport, Mystic, and many other coastal towns from Newfoundland to Florida and along the West Coast have been forced to abandon their roots and become tourist destinations instead. Gloucester, Massachusetts, however, is a rare survivor. The livelihood of America’s oldest fishing port has always been rooted in the life and culture of commercial fishing.

The Gloucester story began in 1004 with the arrival of the Vikings. Six hundred years later, Captain John Smith championed the bountiful waters off the coast of Gloucester, convincing new settlers to come to the area and start a new way of life. Gloucester became the most productive fishery in New England, its people prospering from the seemingly endless supply of cod and halibut. With the introduction of a faster fishing boat–the schooner–the industry flourished. In the twentieth century, the arrival of Portuguese, Jews, and Sicilians turned the bustling center into a melting pot. Artists and writers such as Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, and T. S. Eliot came to the fishing town and found inspiration.

But the vital life of Gloucester was being threatened. Ominous signs were seen with the development of engine-powered net-dragging vessels in the first decade of the twentieth century. As early as 1911, Gloucester fishermen warned of the dire consequences of this new technology. Since then, these vessels have become even larger and more efficient, and today the resulting overfishing, along with climate change and pollution, portends the extinction of the very species that fishermen depend on to survive, and of a way of life special not only to Gloucester but to coastal cities all over the world. And yet, according to Kurlansky, it doesn’t have to be this way. Scientists, government regulators, and fishermen are trying to work out complex formulas to keep fishing alive.

Engagingly written and filled with rich history, delicious anecdotes, colorful characters, and local recipes, The Last Fish Tale is Kurlansky’s most urgent story, a heartfelt tribute to what he calls “socio-diversity” and a lament that “each culture, each way of life that vanishes, diminishes the richness of civilization.”

The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean (P.S.)

Trevor Corson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A GREAT book about noble creatures of the deep 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is fantastic; a great read, very informative and a real page-turner. Total E-Z read too. Recommend it in hardcover; you'll want to keep it on your bookshelf forever.

Dad loved it! 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

My father saw a review of this book and asked for it. He loved it! He's in a nursing home and tells everyone who visits him about this great book and how fascinating it is - he had me buy more to send as gifts to friends and relatives.

Just a common couple 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

We are not lovers of lobsters to eat or science wise, they are ok but not an absolute favorite to eat. However, in July we met the authors Mom at Seawall on Acadia National Park in Maine. She told us about her sons book, she was a good salesperson. We are reading it together for a hubby/wife time together - and we are surprised how it is so well written, very interesting for a subject that I wondered if I would even finish two chapters of, but it is engrossing even for those with a medium interest in learning more about Lobsters, Lobstermen, etc. Insightful too.

Editorial Review:

In this intimate portrait of an island lobstering community and an eccentric band of renegade biologists, journalist Trevor Corson escorts the reader onto the slippery decks of fishing boats, through danger-filled scuba dives, and deep into the churning currents of the Gulf of Maine to learn about the secret undersea lives of lobsters.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Tuna: A Love Story

Richard Ellis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Know Your Tuna

• Tuna is the most popular food fish in the world. It is eaten raw, cooked, in sandwiches, in salads, and in catfood.
• The total worldwide tuna harvest is four million tons.
• In the past, tuna fishermen in the eastern tropical Pacific set their nets around dolphins, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of dolphins.
• There are many kinds of tuna, but the most popular for the Japanese sashimi market is the bluefin, one of the largest of all fishes.
• The largest bluefin tuna ever caught weighed 1,496 pounds.
• The most expensive bluefin tuna was a 440-pounder that sold at the Tsukiji fishmarket in Tokyo for $173,600.
• Almost all of the bluefin tuna caught by commercial fishermen goes to Japan.
• The Japanese import 800,000 tons of tuna every year. (That’s right: eight hundred thousand tons.)
• At the Tsukiji fishmarket in Tokyo, an estimated 1,000 bluefin tunas are auctioned off every day.
• Is there mercury in tuna? Yes. Is it at levels dangerous to humans? Not unless you eat tuna three meals a day.
• Many scientists consider the tuna the most highly-evolved fish in the world.
• Bluefin tunas, along with mako and great white sharks, are the only "warm-blooded" fishes; they can elevate their body temperature as much as 25 degrees above the water they swim in. This makes them particularly effective as predators.
• Bluefin tuna can swim 55 miles an hour. They can migrate across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, then turn around and do it again.
• MIT scientists built a robot tuna in an attempt to replicate the incredibly efficient swimming performance of the living fish. They failed.
• The bluefin tuna, and to a lesser extent, the yellowfin, are among the most sought-after of big-game fishes. Celebrated anglers like Zane Grey, Ernest Hemingway, and Phillip Wylie wrote ecstatically about their pursuit of giant tuna.
• Aquaculture ("fish farming") now accounts for 40% of the world’s fish consumption.
• Tuna ranching now takes place in every country on and in the Mediterranean, and in Australia and Mexico as well. It is scheduled to begin in Hawaii and Alaska.
• Because of commercial overfishing, almost exclusively to feed the insatiable Japanese sashimi market, all populations of bluefin tuna are endangered.
• Overfishing in the Mediterranean has caused such a drop in the bluefin tuna population that the World Wildlife Fund has called for a complete halt to all tuna-fishing there.
• If we cannot learn to breed bluefin tuna in captivity, the great fish will become extinct, writing finis to commercial and recreational tuna fishing--and to the consumption of maguro sashimi in Japan.
• In March, 2008, an Australian company called "Clean Seas" succeeded in getting captive bluefin tuna to spawn. If they can raise them to market size (200-300 pounds), it may relieve the pressure on wild-caught fish.

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Manual of Fish Health: Everything You Need to Know About Aquarium Fish, Their Environment and Disease Prevention

Chris Andrews, Adrian Exell, Neville Carrington

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Neat but can be better 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book based on the great reviews here, and have not been disappointed. That said, there are a few deficiencies that drove me back to the web for more information and hence this review.

There is very little information about contemporary brands and their products that can be used to treat fish diseases. Using the book, one can easily diagnose pop-eye (which I was combating in my prize altum angels). But the suggestions are not terribly helpful in finding the right product to treat this affliction. For example, there are 3 or more different drugs under the Mardel brand that all claim to treat pop-eye. Some target gram-positive bacteria, some target gram-negative bacteria, and some are broad-spectrum antibiotics. At the same time, some can be simultaneouly administered with other treatments, some cannot. And so on. It would have been helpful if the book had helped me sort these details out (which I eventually did) and if it had suggested possible courses of action. Even something that lists all common antibiotics and adds a classification chart to go with them will address this concern.

And as one reviewer pointed out, some of the suggestions are beyond the scope of the hobbyist. But let this not detract you from purchasing a guide that will save you time and help you narrow your diagnosis.

Editorial Review:

A comprehensive guide for fish hobbyists.

A healthy environment is crucial for all aquariums. It is often a challenge to understand what fish need to survive apart from a tank of water and a daily sprinkle of fish food.

The Manual of Fish Health is a fully illustrated and highly informative guide covering: - Maintaining a healthy aquatic environment - Recognizing and coping with pests, diseases, parasites and bacteria - Water chemistry and how to achieve the correct balance for your fish

This book explores vital aspects of health care for all types of fish including freshwater and saltwater, tropical and temperate, and pond and aquarium.

The clear and concise text is abundantly illustrated with underwater photography, charts, and diagrams.

Setting up a Tropical Aquarium Week by Week

Stuart Thraves

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A week-by-week practical guide to setting up and maintaining a superb living environment

As fishkeeping continues to grow in popularity, hobbyists are looking for authoritative advice and more sophisticated results.

Setting Up a Tropical Aquarium Week-by-Week is an encyclopedic reference that takes a fresh look at setting up and maintaining a tropical freshwater aquarium. New hobbyists are quite often impatient to set up their aquarium and want to add their expensive fish as soon as possible. This common misstep can have disastrous results that may discourage beginners from ever trying again.

To curb such enthusiastic impatience, this book presents clear step-by-step practical advice in a convenient week-by-week progression. The book uses detailed photographic sequences to follow each stage of setting up a warm water freshwater tropical aquarium in real-time over a period of ten weeks.

The set-up procedure starts with the first day, when the substrate and life-support systems are installed and progresses to the point at which the first fish are added - two weeks later. The book then follows the aquarium's development during the next eight weeks as the tank turns from an artificial environment into a living eco-system.

Alongside the main aquarium set-up sequence are photographs that show how to create two different aquascape designs based on a cube and a bow-front tank.

Profile sections show fifty aquarium plants and one hundred popular warm water freshwater aquarium fish at relevant stages of the set-up process. Throughout, the book explains the natural processes that occur so that fishkeepers can ensure ongoing success.

Combining clear text and simple-to-follow illustrations, Setting Up a Tropical Aquarium Week-by-Week is a crucial reference for tropical freshwater fish hobbyists.

Red Summer: The Danger, Madness, and Exaltation of Salmon Fishing in a Remote Alaskan Village

Bill Carter

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A vivid, unforgettable account of the danger, pain, and joy of working on a salmon fishing boat and living in a small village on the farthest edge of Alaska

Set in the tiny Native village of Egegik on the shores of Alaska's Bristol Bay, Bill Carter's Red Summer is the thrilling story of one man's journey from novice to seasoned fisherman over the course of four beautiful, brutal summers in one of the earth's few remaining wild places. As millions of salmon race toward their annual spawning grounds, Carter learns the ancient, backbreaking trade of the set net fisherman, one of the most exhilarating and dangerous jobs in the world.

Housed in a dilapidated shack with no hot water and boarded-up windows that keep the bears at bay, Carter spends his days battling the elements on the river and his nights drinking whiskey with a memorable group of hardworking, hard-living characters. There's Sharon, the tough, charismatic woman who runs Carter's fishing crew; Carl, her stoic but warmhearted colleague; and a half-dozen local fishermen, many born and raised in this unforgiving place. Their stories -- harrowing, touching, full of humor -- all underscore the credo of the village's fishermen: Do the work or leave.

Carter's crew is imperiled a number of times as tides rise, nets are snagged, and the weight of too many fish threatens to sink their boat. Written with gusto and honesty, Red Summer brims with astonishing human experience and joins the grand tradition of books written by great American outdoorsmen-writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Edward Abbey, Peter Matthiessen, and Sebastian Junger. Red Summer will appeal not only to fishermen, naturalists, adventurers, and armchair anthropologists alike but also to anyone who has ever yearned, however privately, to escape the bonds of modern civilization.

In Danger at Sea: Adventures of a New England Fishing Family

Samuel S. Cottle

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Highly recommended. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This is a fascinating book.

It is a collection of recollections from growing up in the Jerusalem and Galilee, Rhode Island area in the 1940s and 1950s. It is a collection of short stories.

The book recounts lising a ship. Another run over by a large Russian trawler, the dangers of fishing for swordfish, hauling up a torpedo, hauling up a WWII era plane with the crew still in their seats, sighting a German submarine, and so on.

As it is a collection of short stories, it is a great book to also leave out on a nightstand in a guest bedroom for overnight guests to enjoy.

I will make a trip to the Jerusalem and Galilee, RI area soon to see the area.

Editorial Review:

Books have been written about commercial fishermen, but few have been written by them. This is the real thing. Cottle grew up in a fishing family and became a captain in his own right; here are his firsthand accounts of life at sea, from the terror of a vessel's sinking to the excitement of dragging up unexploded depth charges to the ultimate satisfaction that comes with an honest day's haul.

Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West

Donald Worster

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

When Henry David Thoreau went for his daily walk, he would consult his instincts on which direction to follow. More often than not his inner compass pointed west or southwest. "The future lies that way to me," he explained, "and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side." In his own imaginative way, Thoreau was imitating the countless young pioneers, prospectors, and entrepreneurs who were zealously following Horace Greeley's famous advice to "go west." Yet while the epic chapter in American history opened by these adventurous men and women is filled with stories of frontier hardship, we rarely think of one of their greatest problems--the lack of water resources. And the same difficulty that made life so troublesome for early settlers remains one of the most pressing concerns in the western states of the late-twentieth century.
The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power. In Rivers of Empire, award-winning historian Donald Worster tells the story of this dream and its outcome. He shows how, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons were the first attempting to make that dream a reality, damming and diverting rivers to irrigate their land. He follows this intriguing history through the 1930s, when the federal government built hundreds of dams on every major western river, thereby laying the foundation for the cities and farms, money and power of today's West. Yet while these cities have become paradigms of modern American urban centers, and the farms successful high-tech enterprises, Worster reminds us that the costs have been extremely high. Along with the wealth has come massive ecological damage, a redistribution of power to bureaucratic and economic elites, and a class conflict still on the upswing. As a result, the future of this "hydraulic West" is increasingly uncertain, as water continues to be a scarce resource, inadequate to the demand, and declining in quality.
Rivers of Empire represents a radically new vision of the American West and its historical significance. Showing how ecological change is inextricably intertwined with social evolution, and reevaluating the old mythic and celebratory approach to the development of the West, Worster offers the most probing, critical analysis of the region to date. He shows how the vast region encompassing our western states, while founded essentially as colonies, have since become the true seat of the American "Empire." How this imperial West rose out of desert, how it altered the course of nature there, and what it has meant for Thoreau's (and our own) mythic search for freedom and the American Dream, are the central themes of this eloquent and thought-provoking story--a story that begins and ends with water.

Manual of Koi Health

Keith Holmes, Tony Pitham

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A comprehensive, illustrated and authoritative guide.

Keeping koi is one of the pinnacles of the fishkeeper's art. These magnificent and often expensive fish have inspired a fanatical following, with collectors prepared to devote a lot of time and resources to creating a flourishing koi pond.

One of the top priorities for koi keepers is coping with fish that become ill. Left untreated, many fish suffer and die.

Manual of Koi Health offers practical advice about disease diagnosis, prevention and treatment. The book is written by two experienced koi professionals and internationally recognized experts. It includes a complete listing of all common koi diseases and how to treat them.

Written for non-technical readers, it explains treatments for:

• Parasites
• Bacterial, fungal and viral infections
• Ulcers, lesions and wounds
• Stress conditions.

Preventative measures are also explained. Poor water quality is the most prevalent cause of disease in koi. Water testing and the best way to maintain healthy water conditions are covered in detail.

The book is profusely illustrated with color photographs, and step-by-step instructions provide easy-to-follow directions for a wide range of procedures such as how to handle, anaesthetize and take samples from koi.

Manual of Koi Health is a vital reference for every koi keeper.

Working on the Edge: Surviving In the World's Most Dangerous Profession: King Crab Fishing on Alaska's HighSeas

Spike Walker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 58 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Alaska king crab fishing 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Great book! Told the stories in a factual manner with a bit of a sense of humor. Made me feel like I was there. Loved it and quickly have shared it with my sister to read.

A worthwhile read 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you are a fan of the show, then this is well worth reading. Enough hairy stories and personal experieinces to make you appreciate the lives these people lead and what they go through for the love and money.

Editorial Review:

No profession pits man against nature more brutally than king crab fishing in the frigid, unpredictable waters of the Bering Sea. The yearly death toll is staggering (forty-two men in 1988 alone); the conditions are beyond most imaginations (90-mph Arctic winds, 25-foot seas, and super-human stretches of on-deck labor); but the payback, if one survives can be tens of thousands of dollars for a month-long season.In a breathtaking, action-packed account that combines his personal story with the stories of survivors of the industry's most harrowing disasters, Spike Walker re-creates the boom years of Alaskan crab fishing--a modern-day gold rush that drew hundreds of fortune-and adventure-hunters to Alaska's dangerous waters--and the crash that followed.