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In this brilliant portrait of the oceans' unlikely hero, H. Bruce Franklin shows how menhaden have shaped America's national--and natural--history, and why reckless overfishing now threatens their place in both. Since Native Americans began using menhaden as fertilizer, this amazing fish has greased the wheels of U.S. agriculture and industry. By the mid-1870s, menhaden had replaced whales as a principal source of industrial lubricant, with hundreds of ships and dozens of factories along the eastern seaboard working feverishly to produce fish oil. Since the Civil War, menhaden have provided the largest catch of any American fishery. Today, one company--Omega Protein--has a monopoly on the menhaden "reduction industry." Every year it sweeps billions of fish from the sea, grinds them up, and turns them into animal feed, fertilizer, and oil used in everything from linoleum to health-food supplements. The massive harvest wouldn't be such a problem if menhaden were only good for making lipstick and soap. But they are crucial to the diet of bigger fish and they filter the waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, playing an essential dual role in marine ecology perhaps unmatched anywhere on the planet. As their numbers have plummeted, fish and birds dependent on them have been decimatedand toxic algae have begun to choke our bays and seas. In Franklin's vibrant prose, the decline of a once ubiquitous fish becomes an adventure story, an exploration of the U.S. political economy, a groundbreaking history of America's emerging ecological consciousness, and an inspiring vision of a growing alliance between environmentalists and recreational anglers.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Chapter 1 Now You See Them, Now You Don't
• Chapter 2 The New World of Fish
• Chapter 3 Meeting Menhaden: In Our World and Theirs
• Chapter 4 Whales, Menhaden, and Industrialized Fishing
• Chapter 5 The Death of Fish and the Birth of Ecology
• Chapter 6 At War with Menhaden
• Chapter 7 Ecological Catastrophes
• Chapter 8 Collision Courses
• Chapter 9 The Fish of the Future?
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Index

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Publishers Weekly Review

Franklin, a historian and author of over 15 books (most recently War Stars), was inspired by his passion for saltwater angling to write this history of the all-but-extinct menhaden, a fish that?s historically served an essential part of the Atlantic coastal food web, including human populations (natives and settlers both). Integrating his own observations, Franklin spins a grim but compelling tale of the role menhaden play in maintaining critical near-shore habitats, their utility to early Americans and the collapse of their stocks over the past 150 years. Beginning in Maine during the latter half of the 19th century, the menhaden decline has accelerated alongside the nation?s economic and technological growth, in particular the increasing sophistication of the fishing industry. Effects are widespread: as the menhaden population thins out, so have bass, bluefish, weakfish and other species, while estuaries suffer catastrophic phytoplankton blooms that create long-lived "dead zones" in which nothing can survive. This informative, riveting narrative exposes the greed, short-sightedness and unintended consequences which nearly destroyed the Atlantic coast ecosystem entirely, and continue to wreak havoc in the Gulf of Mexico. Franklin?s final chapter provides a measure of hope, describing the happy but imperiled recovery of menhaden populations along New Jersey and New England coastlines. (Apr.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

H. Bruce Franklin is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. He has authored or edited eighteen books, including War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination, M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America, Prison Writing in Twentieth-Century America, and Vietnam and Other American Fantasies. Franklin has lectured widely and his hundreds of articles and reviews have appeared in publications including The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, Science, The Nation, and Discover.