American Catch

In 2005, the United States imported twelve billion dollars' worth of seafood, nearly double what we had imported ten years earlier. During that same period, our seafood exports rose by a third. In American Catch ($26.95), our foremost fish expert Paul Greenberg looks to New York oysters, gulf shrimp, and Alaskan salmon to reveal how it came to be that 91 percent of the seafood Americans eat is foreign.  Despite the challenges, hope abounds. In New York, Greenberg connects with an oyster restoration project with a vision for how the bivalves might save the city from rising tides; in the gulf, shrimpers band together to offer local catch direct to consumers. And in Bristol Bay, fishermen, environmentalists, and local Alaskans gather to roadblock Pebble Mine. In American Catch Paul Greenberg proposes there is a way to break the current destructive patterns of consumption and return the American catch back to American consumers.

Paul Greenberg is the author of the James Beard Award–winning bestseller Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food and a regular contributor to The New York Times. He has been featured on NPR's Fresh Air and All Things Considered and has lectured for Google, Harvard, the U.S. Senate, and many other institutions. He is currently a fellow with The Blue Ocean Institute and the writer in residence at New York City's South Street Seaport Museum.