INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS & EDITORS Book Award, Finalist 2014
A fascinating discussion of a multifaceted issue and a passionate call
to action --Kirkus
From the acclaimed author of Four Fish and The Omega Principle,
Paul Greenberg uncovers the tragic unraveling of the nation's seafood
supply--telling the surprising story of why Americans stopped eating
from their own waters in American Catch
In 2005, the United States imported five billion pounds of seafood,
nearly double what we imported twenty years earlier. Bizarrely, during
that same period, our seafood exports quadrupled. American Catch
examines New York oysters, Gulf shrimp, and Alaskan salmon to reveal how
it came to be that 91 percent of the seafood Americans eat is foreign.
In the 1920s, the average New Yorker ate six hundred local oysters a
year. Today, the only edible oysters lie outside city limits. Following
the trail of environmental desecration, Greenberg comes to view the New
York City oyster as a reminder of what is lost when local waters are not
valued as a food source.
Farther south, a different catastrophe threatens another seafood-rich
environment. When Greenberg visits the Gulf of Mexico, he arrives
expecting to learn of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill's lingering
effects on shrimpers, but instead finds that the more immediate threat
to business comes from overseas. Asian-farmed shrimp--cheap, abundant,
and a perfect vehicle for the frying and sauces Americans love--have
flooded the American market.
Finally, Greenberg visits Bristol Bay, Alaska, home to the biggest wild
sockeye salmon run left in the world. A pristine, productive fishery,
Bristol Bay is now at great risk: The proposed Pebble Mine project could
under¬mine the very spawning grounds that make this great run possible.
In his search to discover why this pre¬cious renewable resource isn't
better protected, Green¬berg encounters a shocking truth: the great
majority of Alaskan salmon is sent out of the country, much of it to
Asia. Sockeye salmon is one of the most nutritionally dense animal
proteins on the planet, yet Americans are shipping it abroad.
Despite the challenges, hope abounds. In New York, Greenberg connects an
oyster restoration project with a vision for how the bivalves might save
the city from rising tides. In the Gulf, shrimpers band together to
offer local catch direct to consumers. And in Bristol Bay, fishermen,
environmentalists, and local Alaskans gather to roadblock Pebble Mine.
With American Catch, Paul Greenberg proposes a way to break the
current destructive patterns of consumption and return American catch
back to American eaters.
