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A Love Story
Knopf
July 2008
On Sale: July 15, 2008
352 pages
ISBN: 0307267156
EAN: 9780307267153
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The author of The Book of Sharks, Imagining Atlantis, and
Encyclopedia of the Sea turns his gaze to the tuna—one of
the biggest, fastest, and most highly evolved marine
animals and the source of some of the world’s most popular
delicacies—now hovering on the brink of extinction. In
recent years, the tuna’s place on our palates has come
under scrutiny, as we grow increasingly aware of our own
health and the health of our planet. Here, Ellis explains
how a fish that was once able to thrive has become a
commodity, in a book that shows how the natural world and
the global economy converge on our plates. The longest migrator of any fish species, an Atlantic
northern bluefin can travel from New England to the
Mediterranean, then turn around and swim back; in the
Pacific, the northern bluefin can make a round-trip journey
from California to Japan. The fish can weigh in at 1,500
pounds and, in an instant, pick up speed to fifty-five
miles per hour. But today the fish is the target of the insatiable sushi
market, particularly in Japan, where an individual piece
can go for seventy-five dollars. Ellis introduces us to the
high-stakes world of “tuna ranches,” where large schools of
half-grown tuna are caught in floating corrals and held in
pens before being fattened, killed, gutted, frozen, and
shipped to the Asian market. Once on the brink of
bankruptcy, the world’s tuna ranches—in Australia, Spain,
France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and North Africa—have become
multimillion-dollar enterprises. Experts warn that the fish
are dying out and environmentalists lobby for stricter
controls, while entire coastal ecosystems are under threat.
The extinction of the tuna would mean not only the end of
several species but dangerous consequences for the earth as
a whole. In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod, John Cole’s
Striper, John Hersey’s Blues—and of course, Ellis’s own
Great White Shark—this book will forever change the way we
think about fish and fishing.
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