San Antonio College Library

Five Easy Pieces features five contributions, originally published in Nature and Science, demonstrating the massive impacts of modern industrial fisheries on marine ecosystems. Initially published over an eight-year period, from 1995 to 2003, these articles illustrate a transition in scientific thought--from the initially-contested realization that the crisis of fisheries and their underlying ocean ecosystems was, in fact, global to its broad acceptance...

"Alaska pollock is everywhere. If you're eating fish but you don't know what kind it is, it's almost certainly pollock. Prized for its generic fish taste, pollock masquerades as crab meat in california rolls and seafood salads, and it feeds millions as fish sticks in school cafeterias and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches at McDonald's. That ubiquity has made pollock the most lucrative fish harvest in America--the fishery in the United States alone has an annual...

"The world's fisheries are in crisis. Their catches are declining, and the stocks of key species, such as cod and bluefin tuna, are but a small fraction of their previous abundance, while others have been overfished almost to extinction. The oceans are depleted and the commercial fishing industry increasingly depends on subsidies to remain afloat. In these essays, award-winning biologist Dr. Daniel Pauly offers a thought-provoking look at the state...

"Fish on Friday tells a new story of the discovery of America. In Brian Fagan's view, that discovery is the product of the long sweep of history: the spread of Christianity and the radical cultural changes it brought to Europe, the interaction of economic necessity with a changing climate, and generations of unknown fishermen who explored the North Atlantic in the centuries before Columbus. The Church's tradition of not eating meats on holy days created...

"The commercial cod fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador was once the most successful in the world. When it collapsed in 1992 -- causing the largest single-day layoff in Canadian history and irrevocable ecological damage -- fishermen, scholars, and scientists pointed to failures in management such as uncontrolled harvesting and not taking fishermen's concerns into account as likely culprits. "Examining the history of commercial cod fisheries in Newfoundland...