http://www.salon.com/mwt/food/eat_drink/2007/06/20/clover_qa/index.htmlJune 20, 2007 | I first met Charles Clover, the environment editor for London's Daily Telegraph, over a dinner of striped bass in Washington. I used to surf cast for the fish off the beaches of Long Island, N.Y., in the 1980s, a time of stringent catch limits because of the shrinking bass population. Then strong fisheries management and conservation measures led to a dramatic rebound in the fishery, now evident on our dinner plates.
Clover has been monitoring the oceans since the late 1980s. His book, "The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat," was published in the United States last year but, sadly, was met with a deafening lack of attention. That's a shame, because Clover presents a compendium of how precisely we are eating our way through the seas. Scientists reported last year that fish would be gone from the oceans by 2048 if this behavior goes unchecked -- though Clover points out that it's not as if the seas will be empty. In the absence of all the fish we've eaten, we'll also experience a surfeit of species like jellyfish because biodiversity has been undone.
In a globe-trotting expedition, Clover takes readers to Newfoundland to visit with fisherman who no longer have cod to catch; to Africa, where massive fleets roam the seas unchecked to feed the hungry maws in Madrid, Spain, and Tokyo; to Scotland, where successful boats fish illegally, because legal species are in short supply; to Denmark, where sand eels filled with dioxin and PCBs were sent to salmon farms and are now fished out; and to the Mediterranean, where bluefin tuna are being wiped out, while sky-high prices fall due to oversupply. He also outs several high-end eateries that serve tasty morsels of "endangered species."
While this amounts to a depressing indictment, Clover also writes about those who have gotten it right. Their efforts include marine parks in New Zealand that have led to a dramatic rebound in fish populations, and an approach to "fisheries rights" that has proved successful in places like Alaska and Iceland. He also investigates what's in McDonald's fish sandwich; the answer will surprise you.
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