It is representative of the first wave of human exploitation, the species that marks the point at which humans and fish first had large-scale environmental problems and where domestication had to be launched to head off extinction. Salmon, a beautiful silvery animal with succulent pink flesh, is dependent upon clean, free-flowing freshwater rivers.

Each fish is an archive of a particular, epochal shift. The more I thought of it, the more I realized that the four fish that are coming to dominate the modern seafood market are visible footprints, marking four discrete steps humanity has taken in its attempts to master the sea. Greenberg notes that, just as human consumption of mammals and birds has narrowed to four sources each - cows, pigs, sheep and goats in the meat department and chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese for poultry - 'four archetypes of fish flesh' have come to dominate our fish counters: salmon, bass, cod and tuna.įour Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food You'll also find deeper questions about our need 'to reevaluate whether fish are at their root expendable seafood or wildlife desperately in need of our compassion.' In this passionate study, part investigative journalism, part travelogue, part personal memoir about fishing for wide-mouth bass as a boy in Connecticut, Greenberg asks, 'Must we eliminate all wildness from the sea and replace it with some kind of controlled system, or can wildness be understood and managed well enough to keep humanity and the marine world in balance?'įour Fish builds on Mark Kurlansky's pioneering 1998 microhistory Cod, but it's more than simply Cod-plus-three. Farmed salmon or wild? Is swordfish OK now? Is tuna sushi a bad habit? You'll find answers - though perhaps not the ones you're expecting or hoping for - in Four Fish, his excellent, wide-ranging exploration of humankind's relationship with fish - the flesh that even many vegetarians consume. Whenever Paul Greenberg, a lifelong angler and writer about seafood, mentioned that he was working on a 'fish-in-danger book,' the question most often asked was which fish people should eat. His first book, Leaving Katya, was a fictional love story set during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Paul Greenberg has been fishing since childhood and has written on the topic for The New York Times since 2005.

Four fish greenberg