In his recent book, Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, Paul Greenberg presents readers with an enriching history of our dynamic relationship to the fish we domesticate. I was pleasantly surprised that Four Fish does not mirror a typically dry historic tale nor does it in any way feel like an “environmental” book, as the title might suggest. Instead, Greenberg gives readers an intriguing (and humorous) picture of the intentional choices and accidental moments that have brought specific seafood to our plates. Similar to our dependence on four primary red meat and poultry animals, Greenberg traces the technological achievements from Canada to Greece that led to an increasingly presumptuous domestication of riverine salmon, coastal sea bass, offshore cod, and finally transnational tuna. This journey shows us why we should strive to master the complexities of wild fish in addition to feeding the world by perfecting genetic modifications in tank systems (if we must). 
One interesting theme throughout the stories was how both global politics and fish biology have guided which fish came to international prominence. Salmon were the first farmed fish not only due to population declines, but because their large eggs allowed for curious entrepreneurs and early geneticists to decode their spawning secrets decades ago in Norway, one of the birthplaces of aquaculture. Another example of this biological selection is Vietnamese tra, which can withstand low oxygen conditions because it breathes air. Similarly, the Australian barramundi has become popular not due to its tasty flesh, but because they are naturally docile, fertile, and disease-resistant. (In fact, many of the fish aquaculturists promote around the world gain traction because they taste like nothing rather than tasting “fishy”).  |
| Important baby sea bass food! |
If modern salmon were born in Norway, Greenberg argues that farmed sea bass got their start in Israel, of all places. However, once Israel lost access to the coast, they lost their competitive edge to the Greeks. Interestingly, the African tilapia (grown all over the world and now considered a pesky invasive species) was a convenient front for Columbian drug lords. As can be seen, it is not always cultural traditions that generate demand (Japanese only acquired a taste for fatty Bluefin tuna after the Americans did post WWII!), but rather a convenient alignment of strange circumstances that lead to one fish (often farmed) replacing a wild fish in global markets.
In the final chapter, Greenberg takes readers back to the early 20th century to draw a comparison between tuna’s plight and that of another long-lived sea creature: the whale. Whale populations owe their recovery not to the moratorium that was signed in the early 1980s, but more to the development of cheap whale oil substitutes and the anti-whaling sentiments that stirred the world throughout the 1960s and 70s. First comes economics and values, then governance and management. Greenberg argues that the moral evolution that turned whales from food into wildlife is entirely lacking for tuna. Tuna is fish is food. While there is nothing amoral about this logic, when people fail to recognize that the planet’s wild-life that we cherish is also the same wild-life that we eat, there is little support for conservation and management in the face of short-term economic gains.
Aside from pointing toward the need for a greater appreciation of wildness within our fishing industry, Greenberg does note the importance of fish for feeding the growing global population. He simply wants us to make smart aquaculture choices (rather than farming tuna at a 20:1 pound feed ratio or using surrogate fish moms – imagine!). One challenge he admits is that science and political will can’t change the fact that consumers aren’t yet familiar with fish such as tra, barramundi, or the more recent kona kampachi from Hawaii. So, in the meantime, Greenberg encourages the global fishing community to master the subtleties of fisheries science for wild predators and leave the fish farming to the vegetarian species that can have a smaller impact on surrounding ecosystems. Overall, I highly recommend this book for a very engaging and thought-provoking read. 
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