Summer Book Club: Four Fish by Paul Greenberg Chapters "Salmon" and "Sea Bass"

On Wednesday August 31, the University of Maryland Chapter of the American Fisheries Society met to discuss our fall lineup of outreach and field trips and to discuss two chapters from this summer's book club book, "Four Fish" by Paul Greenberg. We plan to repeat a field trip undertaken two years ago by revisiting the Omega Protein plant in Reedville, Virginia! This is particularly exciting for president Emily Liljestrand, who is using models to study menhaden migration and plans to graduate in about a year. Our final seine demonstration would have been conducted that weekend, Sunday September 4, but unfortunately, foul weather derailed those intentions. If you missed any of the other three demonstrations, check out some pictures and descriptions HERE, and come out again next year. We had a lot of fun and look forward to starting up the seine demonstrations again next year. Thank you to everyone who came out and saw us and/or supported us. A special thank you to Alicia Lindbom, the lead park ranger at Calvert Cliffs State Park and to all the seasonal rangers. We literally could not do it without you.

A few of the subunit activities are still in the planning stages and much too tentative to report upon. But we'll keep the public abreast of our outreach and events as they become finalized.

Past AFS subunit member Cara Simpson looking over the fish ladder at the

Bonneville dam in Oregon. Fish ladders are one way to mitagate the effect 

of damning on salmon spawning runs.

With all that out of the way, we launched into our discussion of chapters "Salmon" and "Sea Bass." When pressed to identify the most surprising thing we learned from these pages, Carlos Lozano pointed to the information about dam building in the Pacific Northwest, which severely restricted salmon passage to spawning grounds. However, this decision was not made in ignorance, but rather a careful consideration of both detriment to fish and benefit to humans. As Greenberg puts so eloquently: "wild salmon as a commodity have never been economically valuable enough to deter the more immediately profitable human activities that destroy salmon." In retrospect, after the damage is done, we often don't give enough credit to the needs and wants of humanity at the time of the incident. Now we're at a point where habitat loss and overfishing have forced us to stock salmon- raise them in captivity and then have them released back in the wild to be caught by fishermen. However, this, and selectively capturing salmon at different times during their run risks removing critical genetic diversity that is essential for long term persistence of any population in the face of stochasticity.

In the Sea Bass chapter, the topic that piqued our interest was the etymology of fish species and the marketing motivations involved. A famous example of renaming a species when it performs poorly in the fish market is the Patagonian toothfish (later "Chilean sea bass"). Not a true bass, the name change nonetheless transformed this overlooked species into a popular and occasionally overfished fishery. The European sea bass, a real Morone or "bass" species, has also had a range of pseudonyms including "branzino," "loup de mer," and "spigola." The supposed intent is to add nuance and mystery to the deceptively widely available fish, instilling an air of vacation and adventure to the consumer. We could think of a few other examples of this tactic, including "capeshark" instead of dogfish, and "swai" instead of Asian catfish.

With the last bit of time in our meeting, we once again revisited an idea brought up in the introductory meeting for Four Fish- the role of non fiction in science education. Matt summed it up better than anyone- this book is a narrative account with science elements. Though it does not contain species names or statistics- essential in primary literature- the first hand style and story entice the reader into effortlessly reading this book for 100 pages in a single sitting. The non-scientific elements, such as the Greek's lengthy history with bass or the nuances of aquaculture regulation might not have crossed our path in any other format. We value this and other similar literature for broadening our understanding of our own science and how it is placed within a richly complex world.

We'll be finishing our reading of Four Fish and discussing the last two chapters: Cod and Tuna in a meeting later this month, where we will also hear from guest speaker Genny Nesslage about the history of the Omega Protein menhaden processing plant.