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From Booklist ( /gp/feature.html/?docId=1000027801 ) ---------------------------------------------------- It’s the most common fish on America’s tables and in its fast-food restaurants, but few know much about the origins and marketing of Alaska pollock. Netted by fishermen in the Bering Sea, Alaska pollock has done for Pacific fisheries what cod once did for the Atlantic. Ground and processed, Alaska pollock becomes surimi, which goes to table as imitation crabmeat. Cut into shapes, it appears in supermarket freezers as fish sticks and at fast-food restaurants as fish sandwich filling, prized for its “neutral,” nonfishy taste. Biologist Bailey served as an inspector on a Japanese fishing trawler, and this experience led him on a quest to learn as much as possible about this sea creature currently so vital to the world’s tables. He finds pollock populations to be extraordinarily resilient but nevertheless vulnerable to overfishing. Bailey traces the history of fishery regulation back to the seventeenth century, and he tries to identify parallel problems and solutions encountered by the Atlantic cod industries’ boom and bust. --Mark Knoblauch Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) Review ------ “Few would be accused of romanticising the pollock—a fish about which only the most devoted marine biologists would use the word ‘charismatic.’ But the fishermen’s tales of its hunting to near extinction are no less fantastical. . . . [Bailey’s] book isn’t really about the fish at all. It is about a modern-day gold rush, a Wild West of the high seas, and an environmental catastrophe.” (Tom Whipple Times (UK)) “Bailey blends science with competitive fighting over a substantial pile of money. . . . Never boring or entangled in scientific jargon, Billion-Dollar Fish practically makes pollock fishing out to be The Old Man and the Sea.” (Shelf Awareness) “[T]he first natural history of this ubiquitous fish and an analysis of its population. Although the market for pollock—worth more than a billion dollars a year in the United States alone—seems buoyant compared with some others, Bailey unveils a familiar tale of steep decline.” (Barbara Kiser Nature) “Not that it’s a bad thing, but sometimes Billion-Dollar Fish reads like two different books: one a compelling history of the Alaska pollock fishery, the other an excellent primer on the development of fisheries science and resource strategy.” (Tyrone Burke Canadian Geographic) “Billion-Dollar Fish is an eye-opener for those who have caught themselves pondering the origins of their fried fish sandwiches.” (Erin Wayman ScienceNews) “[Bailey] writes in a workmanlike style but lightens his account with sporadic portraits of colorful and powerful personalities from the commercial fishing business and its environmentalist antagonists. . . . Billion-Dollar Fish conveys the story of pollock with his skeptical, but affectionate, eye for industrial and environmental cls alike.” (Elizabeth Lester Science) “[Bailey] paints a revealing picture of the colourful personalities at sea and ashore whose economic imperatives raised rates of fishing mortality to levels which, experience was to show, made little long-term biological or even economic sense.” (Richard Shelton Times Literary Supplement) “Bailey is more than a fishery biologist specializing in Alaskan pollock. He is also a talented writer with a graceful style who can casually deliver a wealth of unusual ins and enliven his topic. . . . Bailey is one of those aristocrats among science writers whose work illuminates his field, rewarding general readers as well as professionals. Billion-Dollar Fish is the most authoritative source of information on the US’s most important fish. Essential.” (F. T. Manheim, George Mason University Choice) 2013 Outstanding Academic Title (Choice) “An engaging, knowledgeable, and entertaining book. . . . Bailey’s book is an eloquent illustration of the ways in which human institutions, useful at first, can run out of control and do more harm than good.” (Paul J. B. Hart, University of Leicester Fish and Fisheries) Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) See all Editorial Reviews ( /dp/product-description/022602234X/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&isInIframe=0 )