Skip to main content

Billion-Dollar Fish

The Untold Story of Alaska Pollock

Alaska pollock is everywhere. If you’re eating fish but you don’t know what kind it is, it’s almost certainly pollock. Prized for its generic fish taste, pollock masquerades as crab meat in california rolls and seafood salads, and it feeds millions as fish sticks in school cafeterias and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches at McDonald’s. That ubiquity has made pollock the most lucrative fish harvest in America—the fishery in the United States alone has an annual value of over one billion dollars. But even as the money rolls in, pollock is in trouble: in the last few years, the pollock population has declined by more than half, and some scientists are predicting the fishery’s eventual collapse.

In Billion-Dollar Fish, Kevin M. Bailey combines his years of firsthand pollock research with a remarkable talent for storytelling to offer the first natural history of Alaska pollock. Crucial to understanding the pollock fishery, he shows, is recognizing what aspects of its natural history make pollock so very desirable to fish, while at the same time making it resilient, yet highly vulnerable to overfishing. Bailey delves into the science, politics, and economics surrounding Alaska pollock in the Bering Sea, detailing the development of the fishery, the various political machinations that have led to its current management, and, perhaps most important, its impending demise. He approaches his subject from multiple angles, bringing in the perspectives of fishermen, politicians, environmentalists, and biologists, and drawing on revealing interviews with players who range from Greenpeace activists to fishing industry lawyers.

Seamlessly weaving the biology and ecology of pollock with the history and politics of the fishery, as well as Bailey’s own often raucous tales about life at sea, Billion-Dollar Fish is a book for every person interested in the troubled relationship between fish and humans, from the depths of the sea to the dinner plate.

288 pages | 33 halftones, 7 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 2013

Biological Sciences: Conservation, Natural History

Earth Sciences: Oceanography and Hydrology

Economics and Business: Business--Industry and Labor

Reviews

“Few would be accused of romanticising the pollock—a fish about which only the most devoted marine biologists would use the word ‘charismatic.’ But the fishermen’s tales of its hunting to near extinction are no less fantastical. . . . [Bailey’s] book isn’t really about the fish at all. It is about a modern-day gold rush, a Wild West of the high seas, and an environmental catastrophe.”

Tom Whipple | Times (UK)

“Bailey blends science with competitive fighting over a substantial pile of money. . . . Never boring or entangled in scientific jargon, Billion-Dollar Fish practically makes pollock fishing out to be The Old Man and the Sea.”

Shelf Awareness

“[T]he first natural history of this ubiquitous fish and an analysis of its population. Although the market for pollock—worth more than a billion dollars a year in the United States alone—seems buoyant compared with some others, Bailey unveils a familiar tale of steep decline.”

Barbara Kiser | Nature

Table of Contents

Preface
Prologue: Fishing Lessons

1 Introduction: White Gold Fever
2 A Historical Background: From an Inexhaustible Ocean to the Three-Mile Limit
3 Fishing the High Seas: Japan and the Soviet Union Develop the Harvest of Pollock in the Bering Sea
4 Americanization! The Rush for White Gold and the Developing Fishery
5 An Empty Donut Hole: The Great Collapse of a North Pacific Pollock Stock
6 Viking Invasion: Norway’s Link to the Pollock Industry
7 A New Fish on the Block: Advancing Knowledge of Pollock Biology
8 A New Ocean: Changing Concepts of Ocean Production and Management of Fisheries
9 Factories of Doom: The Pollock Fishing Industry Clashes with the Environment
10 All in the Family: Olympic Fishing and Domestic Strife in the Industry
11 Bridge over Troubled Water: Tranquility after the American Fisheries Act
12 Alaska Pollock’s Challenging Future

Appendix A: Terminology
Appendix B: Other Abbreviations

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Awards

Choice Magazine: CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Awards
Won

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press