Summer Book Club: Four Fish by Paul Greenberg

There is a long standing tradition of reading during the summer. There are slightly academic associations with this practice- teachers would assign one or two books for kids to read in the off months before returning to school in the fall. But in more recent years the idea of the "beach read" has also developed, a light and non-intensive story, usually aimed at women, to read stretched out in the sand. We wanted to try something else. We'd keep the sand and sea motif but we'd make it the topic of the book we read rather than the setting itself (although that by no means means you can't read this one in front of a body of water). We had several suggestions but ultimately decided on Paul Greenberg's Four Fish, a New York Times bestseller on the hardcover list, originally published in 2010. In this book, Greenberg explores the history and fate of four fish: Salmon, Cod, Tuna, and Sea Bass, and how they have come to globally dominate the fish markets. The AFS Student Subunit met last week to discuss the introduction, where Greenberg presents the concept of the four fish and explains his own childhood and vested interest in the persistence of fisheries.

We were impressed by the sophistication of Greenberg's discussion, even in this early chapter. He talks about growing up in suburban Connecticut with ready access to streams and lakes, and how as he aged he had to push further out to catch the same number of fish. He reveals his uncertainty about the root cause of this decline in local fish stocks; Instead of boldly taking a stance that overfishing was the villain, he admits that it could have been any number of things- the weather, copper sulfate, etc. This kind of admission of ignorance is a bold move for any writer who needs  authority and resoluteness to convince their audience, but as scientist we appreciate the humble and honest over the bombastic and potentially false. We already know with this introduction that we are in the hands of a dutiful levelheaded reporter willing to research rather than assume- to seek out what is right over what feels right. Greenberg is also a proficient orator, see below for his TED talk, essentially verbalizing the introduction to his book:

We then considered what it means for a message like this to come from a reporter rather than a scientist. Though it is true that scientists will more thoroughly understand the problem, the literature, and the contemporary research, a reporter has been trained to write eloquently and integrate ideas into a cohesive narrative. These days, with "Don't be Such a Scientist" being popularly passed around in academia, it is considered critical to create a story with your work for the public and fellow scientist alike. To create the requisite conflict, tension, and resolution, this necessitates placing the author into the narrative itself, something with which reporters have much more experience than scientist. They have better training with appealing to emotion, appealing to pathos by explaining the positive benefits of the work. We agreed that the ideal arrangement for a non-fiction book like this would be a collaborative project between both scientists, who have the detailed knowledge of the subject, and reporters, who can work this knowledge into an informative and entertaining narrative. Coming from an arguably objective reporter might also get controversial messages, for example restrictive fishing regulations, across to a potentially suspicious and hostile audience.

We then reiterated a popular topic among our group: how perceived trustworthiness and historical level of fisheries regulation are negatively correlated, something that is especially noticeable when you compare the East and West coasts of the United States. Basically, the East Coast has younger fishing stocks which have experienced fewer collapses and therefore less intensive regulation. So when regulation does need to be applied, watermen are more receptive to the message.

From there we moved on to our final topic- who is the true audience of these books? I asked our group how often they read books like this, fisheries non-fiction, a category in which we also place, say, Mark Kurlansky's Cod or Trevor Corson's The Secret Life of Lobsters. Suzan said that these books were vital as a starting place when preparing for her PhD qualifying exams. They are an excellent resource for understanding how the field is perceived outside of the scientific community. They provide a much needed reminder of how important your work is in the context of the broader world. Many members echoed this sentiment, adding that they enjoy reading science books outside of our specific field, books like A Brief History of Time, the famous Stephen Hawking bestseller of 1988. However, as an outsider, we read this material with no idea of the bias or politics within the field. Though we can understand tensions, gripes, and intentional put-downs between fisheries scientists, and can thus take with a grain of salt anything one writer says of another, we have no such knowledge within the field of nuclear physics. Being scientists ourselves really does offer a unique experience of reading the books in our field because we have critical insider knowledge that shapes our perspective.

We hope to expand on and explore these ideas further in our subsequent meetings as we read through the chapters of Four Fish. Feel free to comment on any of the ideas expressed in this post below in the comments, and we'd love it if you read along with us! We're reading "Salmon" and "Sea Bass" before regrouping in mid-August.