The New Fish

The Truth about Farmed Salmon and the Consequences We Can No Longer Ignore

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Pub Date 11 Jul 2023 | Archive Date Not set

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Description

Eat more fish, the doctors say. But is the salmon you are consuming really healthy?  

In the early 1970s, a group of scientists researched how to make more food for the growing population of the world. They looked to the sea. They sampled genes from salmon in 41 Norwegian and Swedish rivers and designed a new salmon that was fatter and faster growing. This was considered an amazing innovation and was the beginning of a new industry: salmon farming.

The industry spread from coastal Norway to Scotland, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Chile, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and the United States. Business boomed, jobs were created, and a new type of food, the farmed salmon, spread around the globe. People everywhere bought and enjoyed the abundant fish: grilled, poached, roasted, and as sushi and sashimi. They were grateful for this delicious, affordable protein. 

But at what cost? 

We now know that there were unintended consequences: some of these new fish escaped, competing for sustenance with other fish in the sea. The new fish spread diseases, salmon louse swarmed, and wild salmon stocks dwindles.  

In a prizewinning five-year investigation, authors Simen Sætre and Kjetil Østli took an in-depth look at Norway’s role in the global salmon industry and, for the first time, produced a comprehensive evaluation of the detrimental effects of salmon farming. From lice to escapees, from concentrating the waste of sea pens in the fjords through which wild salmon swim to their natal streams to the fact that salmon farming causes a net reduction of protein reaped from the ocean, the results don’t look good. Recent victories, such as the banning of net-pen fish farms in the waters of Washington State, are an indication that we are awakening to the environmental price of engineered fish.

It is said that we will continue to make the same mistakes unless we understand them. The New Fish combines nature writing from Norwegian fjords, the coast of Canada, Icelandic landscapes and the far south of Chile with character-driven literary non-fiction and classic muckraking. The authors started with this question: What happens when you create a new animal and place it in the sea? This book will tell you the answer.



 

Eat more fish, the doctors say. But is the salmon you are consuming really healthy?  

In the early 1970s, a group of scientists researched how to make more food for the growing population of the...


Advance Praise

“A searing indictment of the externalities and inequities inflicted by a profit-obsessed aquaculture industry – and a clarion call to protect, restore – and cherish - the Earth’s life-giving natural systems that sustain us.” – Joseph Bogaard, executive director, Save Our wild Salmon Coalition

The New Fish is a riveting investigative who-done-it about how salmon, a beloved symbol of the natural world, was turned into a monster. It is an adventure and deeply thoughtful. This book provides essential insight for everyone trying to figure out how to bequeath a livable planet to the children of earth. “ – Independent scientist Alexandra Morton

“Simen Sætre and Kjetil Østli offer a chilling account of the dark side of the global rush to domesticate salmon. The New Fish is essential reading for anyone interested in food, the environment and the consequences of toying with nature.” – Robert O’Harrow, The Washington Post contributing writer

"Industrial salmon farming will, in time, come to be seen as the most destructive form of factory farming yet invented, a horrific endpoint of the 20th century’s obsession with profit no matter the cost. Around the world, the salmon industry’s methods, technology, political influence and dubious product are coming under increasing question and attack. This important book tells the truth hidden beneath the dark waters: it explains what happened, how it happened, and why it must be stopped." - Richard Flanagan, author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North and winner of the Man Booker Prize 2014

"Industrial salmon farming is an ecological travesty and a moral tragedy, and this book is a powerful and timely expose of an industry driven by profit and not much else. It should be required reading for anyone who includes salmon on their menu. Reading it reminded me, time and again, that I made the right decision 35 years ago when I stopped eating fish." - Jonathan Balcombe, author of Super Fly and the international bestseller What a Fish Knows

“A searing indictment of the externalities and inequities inflicted by a profit-obsessed aquaculture industry – and a clarion call to protect, restore – and cherish - the Earth’s life-giving natural...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781952338144
PRICE $22.00 (USD)
PAGES 355

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