Plenty of Fish in the Sea? Not Really

I know we just told you recently that there are plenty of fish in the sea, but… in reality, that adage may be on the verge of irrelevance. Just last month was the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a solemn reminder that there is much work to be done if we are to save our oceans from disappearing.

Enter World Without Fish, a game-changing book for kids about what’s happening to fish, the oceans, and our environment, and what they can do about it. The book has been enjoying a bit of a media blitz since it came out. Along with this coverage has come an onslaught of Q&As with the author, with some useful information about what adults can do to help. Here’s a round-up of the best questions and answers:

From the NY Times blog Diner’s Journal

What is the one most important action most of us can take to support healthy oceans?

From the LA Times blog Jacket Copy

In “The World Without Fish: How Kids Can Help Save the Oceans,” you take some themes you’ve touched on before — fish, fishing, sustainability and our oceans — and address them to children. How did you make the subject approachable?

Because of all the books I have done related to this topic I have traveled all over the country talking to adults and children in schools about what is happening in the oceans and I have found two things. There are a lot of people who are really concerned, kids in particular, and there is complete confusion and misunderstanding. This is partly because it is a very complicated problem and partly because fishermen, regulators and biologists all talk in extremely inaccessible language, full of inside codes and assumptions. I set out to explain the whole thing in simple, clear language, step by step, starting with Charles Darwin, who explained the natural order we are trying to deal with. I use careful explained biology, politics, economics. I use text and pictures and a graphic novel that puts it in human terms. I tell what is happening, what will happen if we don’t fix it, how we are trying to fix it, what the problems are and what concerned individuals can do about it.

From The Guardian

Is fish too cheap?

Cheap fish is one of the big problems. I promote the idea that fish ought to be expensive. You catch fewer fish, they are of a higher quality and fishermen get better price for them. The agricultural people, like Michael Pollan, are saying the same thing about produce, which raises the question – what are poor people supposed to be eating? I wish I had a smart answer for that.

You once worked as a commercial fisherman…

I always wanted to be a writer and I had in my head that a writer should either go to sea or go to war. There was a war available at the time but the sea was a much better idea. I did it for a couple of summers, to earn money for college.

My most memorable job was on a lobster boat. I was a pretty strong kid and they just needed someone who could haul pots on 200ft of line. We didn’t have a radio; sometimes you’d hear this roar, see a dark shadow and realise a freighter was bearing down on you. I never gave one thought to how dangerous it was. I absolutely loved it.

Many years later I was on a commercial fishing boat as a reporter and I wondered why the hell I’d liked it so much.

So working on boats has informed your work?

It did, it gave me a great fondness and admiration for fisherman, and a love of the sea. Wherever I go I’m always drawn to fishing ports. Fishermen are a special breed of people, they are not salaried, they are self-employed and often working for a share of the catch. It makes them a very independent, self-assured breed of people. I like blue-collar society. Communities of rich people tend to be very boring.

You sport a fisherman-type beard…

I just got back from a fly fishing trip to Idaho with my daughter for rainbow trout. There’s a photograph in the book of me with beard and daughter documenting the first fish she ever caught, a striped bass. The great irony of it is that in a book that talks a lot about overfishing there’s a shot of the author with an illegal oversize fish. I assure you we threw it back.