Fishy Business: “There was a poor sable catch this season,” apologized our waiter at David’s Deli in San Francisco. This venerable eatery has served the delicious smoked white fish for some 52 years, but its no longer available here, in spite of its perpetual inclusion on the printed menu. Consumers might well wonder where tonight’s fish dinner comes from. A real eye opener is The End of the Line: How over-Fishing is Changing the World and What we Eat by Charles Clover (Ebury Press, £14.99). Revealingly, as much as 85% of “by-catch” is flung back into the sea, but it’s not only prawn trawlers that are the worst offenders. Ever-larger ships with sonar detection and sea-mapping software enable yields far larger than can be replenished. Sadly, even the solution of fish farming has its own ecological problems, such as water contamination, over-reliance on antibiotics, and cruelty. Not only that, it can take some 20 tonnes of dead, ground up fish to raise just one tonne live harvest. This book has sold so well in hardback, it’s just had a March paperback printing. But where is the American edition???

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