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The Founding Fish

Author: John McPhee

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2003-09-10

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0374706344

John McPhee's twenty-sixth book is a braid of personal history, natural history, and American history, in descending order of volume. Each spring, American shad-Alosa sapidissima-leave the ocean in hundreds of thousands and run heroic distances upriver to spawn. McPhee--a shad fisherman himself--recounts the shad's cameo role in the lives of George Washington and Henry David Thoreau. He fishes with and visits the laboratories of famous ichthyologists; he takes instruction in the making of shad darts from a master of the art; and he cooks shad in a variety of ways, delectably explained at the end of the book. Mostly, though, he goes fishing for shad in various North American rivers, and he "fishes the same way he writes books, avidly and intensely. He wants to know everything about the fish he's after--its history, its habits, its place in the cosmos" (Bill Pride, The Denver Post). His adventures in pursuit of shad occasion the kind of writing--expert and ardent--at which he has no equal.

The Founding Fish

Author: John McPhee

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2003-09-10

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780374528836

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A study of the American shad traces its annual migrations and life cycle in both freshwater rivers and the ocean, focusing on those living in the Delaware River and discussing issues related to tidal power and catch-and-release campaigns.

The Founding Fish

Author: John McPhee

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2002-10-13

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9780374104443

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The Founding Flies

Author: Mike Valla

Publisher: Stackpole Books

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0811708330

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43 American fly-tying masters, including Mary Orvis Marbury, Thaddeus Norris, and Theodore Gordon.

Cod

Author: Mark Kurlansky

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2011-03-04

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0307369803

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Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been based on it, economies have depended on it, and the settlement of North America was driven by it. Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could. What did the Vikings eat in icy Greenland and on the five expeditions to America recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod -- frozen and dried in the frosty air, then broken into pieces and eaten like hardtack. What was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the Basques, an enigmatic people with a mysterious, unlimited supply of cod. Cod is a charming tour of history with all its economic forces laid bare and a fish story embellished with great gastronomic detail. It is also a tragic tale of environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once the cod's numbers were legendary. In this deceptively whimsical biography of a fish, Mark Kurlansky brings a thousand years of human civilization into captivating focus.

Your Inner Fish

Author: Neil Shubin

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2008-01-15

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0307377164

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The paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the “fish with hands,” tells a “compelling scientific adventure story that will change forever how you understand what it means to be human” (Oliver Sacks). By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

Why Fish Don't Exist

Author: Lulu Miller

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1501160346

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Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.

Freshwater Game Fish of North America

Author: Peter G. Thompson

Publisher: Down East Books

Published: 2009-09-01

Total Pages: 811

ISBN-13: 0892728949

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This book is a magnificently illustrated volume that will help anglers, scientists, and nature lovers to identify and appreciate North American freshwater game fish. Along with illustrations that showcase gender color variations for each species, Thompson provides information about fish biology, behavior, and habitats. Common and scientific names are provided, as are range maps and information about each fish family's global range, physical traits, diet, significance to humans, and present status regarding its potential endangerment.

Return of the Gar

Author: Mark Spitzer

Publisher: University of North Texas Press

Published: 2015-03-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1574415999

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The alligator gar belongs to a family of fish that has remained fundamentally unchanged since the Cretaceous, over 100 million years ago. Its intimidating size and plethora of teeth have made it demonized throughout its range in North America, resulting in needless killing. Massive oil spills in its breeding range have not helped its population either. Interspersing science, folklore, history, and action-packed fishing narratives, Spitzer's empathy for and fascination with this air-breathing, armored fish provides for an entertaining odyssey that examines management efforts to preserve and propagate the alligator gar in the United States. Spitzer also travels to Central America, Thailand, and Mexico to assess the global gar situation. He reflects on what is and isn't working in compromised environments, then makes a case for conservation based on personal experience and a love for wildness for its own sake. This colorful portrait of the alligator gar can serve as a metaphor and measurement for the future of our biodiversity during a time of planetary crisis.

An Entirely Synthetic Fish

Author: Anders Halverson

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2010-03-02

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0300166869

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Anders Halverson provides an exhaustively researched and grippingly rendered account of the rainbow trout and why it has become the most commonly stocked and controversial freshwater fish in the United States. Discovered in the remote waters of northern California, rainbow trout have been artificially propagated and distributed for more than 130 years by government officials eager to present Americans with an opportunity to get back to nature by going fishing. Proudly dubbed an entirely synthetic fish by fisheries managers, the rainbow trout has been introduced into every state and province in the United States and Canada and to every continent except Antarctica, often with devastating effects on the native fauna. Halverson examines the paradoxes and reveals a range of characters, from nineteenth-century boosters who believed rainbows could be the saviors of democracy to twenty-first-century biologists who now seek to eradicate them from waters around the globe. Ultimately, the story of the rainbow trout is the story of our relationship with the natural world--how it has changed and how it startlingly has not.