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In this excellent portrait of the oceans’ unlikely hero, H. Bruce Franklin shows how menhaden have shaped America’s countrywide—and natural—history, and why reckless overfishing now threatens their place in both. Since Local Americans began using menhaden as fertilizer, this phenomenal seafood has greased the tires of U.S. agriculture and industry. By the mid-1870s, menhaden had changed whales as a main source of commercial lubricant, with hundreds of ships and a large number of factories across the eastern seaboard working feverishly to create fish oil. Since the Civil War, menhaden have provided the greatest catch of any American fishery. Today, one company—Omega Health proteins—has a monopoly on the menhaden “reduction industry.” Every year it sweeps vast amounts of fish from the sea, grinds them up, and becomes them into animal give food to, fertilizer, and oil used in from linoleum to health-food supplements. The substantial harvest wouldn’t be such a challenge if menhaden were only best for making lipstick and soap. But they are crucial to the diet of bigger seafood and they filter the waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, participating in an essential dual role in marine ecology perhaps unmatched everywhere on earth. As their figures have plummeted, seafood and birds dependent on them have been decimatedand dangerous algae have begun to choke our bays and seas. In Franklin’s radiant prose, the decline of a once ubiquitous seafood becomes an excitement story, an exploration of the U.S. politics economy, a groundbreaking history of America’s growing ecological awareness, and an inspiring vision of a growing alliance between environmentalists and recreational anglers.
