Remarkably determined to get the true story, Journalist Lee Van Der Voo goes aboard fishing vessels “from Alaska to Maine" to tell the story of the everyday fisherman and the challenges they are up against when faced with corporate fishing. It soon becomes clear that fisherpeople have been abandoned in this era of “ocean privatization," an age when now more than half of America's seafood is under private control. Van Der Loo examines the “sustainable seafood movement” and why corporations have taken control of it, betraying small fishermen in the process. In Chapter One, titled "Bering Sea: Monsanto on the Ocean" she bravely goes aboard a fishing ship to see what the workers onboard experience day-to-day. The book is very human, and introduces us to actual people, presenting their lives working twelve hour days onboard a vessel, "confined to the factory, their quarters, or a few common areas." There is however, an effort to keep this industry on a leash, but the efforts are environmental, rather than focused on worker rights. The main tool in the environmental fight are marine biologists who also toil on the boats, working to determine if the catch can be termed environmentally sustainable. Meanwhile, many of these ships have slave-like conditions where one finds the workers in states of dangerous indentureship, with long hours of overwork where workers are often maimed. It is also known on large factory ships for workers to deliberately self-maim in order to escape the ship, certainly something few people think of when preparing a fish for the dinner plate.
Van Der Loo's conversations with the marine bioligist are extremely interesting. The expectations placed upon him to monitor thousands of tonnes of catch are very high. Marine mammals can be caught by mistake and killed in the fishing factory machinery, something he is supposed to tally, among a number of other duties in monitoring onboard the boat.
"Everyone who handles pollock, on these trawl boats and elesewhere, is certified to a chain of custody so that no imposters creep in. There are also audits and scientific assessments and third-party overseers. The task of satisfying them is not easy."
One of the things we continually glean through Van Der Loo's journalistic exploration of factory ship life is that the workers on these large vessels are often in peril and in need of human right monitoring. Observes Van Der Loo, "they are helpless to leave without severe financial penalites," hence the stories of desperation and self-maiming.
She also talks about corporate control over the industry, "and this is where we have arrived in American seafood: at this union of privatization and conservation." With catch-share arrangments becoming more sophisticated, there is at times a battlefield in fishing, so that Van Der Loo also found not everyone was willing to speak on the record. There are quota-control wars between co-operatives and corporations.
However, each chapter in this book explores the real life of an American fisherman Van Der Loo has met whi agreed to tell their story to the world. As a result the book is a series of encounters, readable and interesting. Van Der Loo aims to bring home the personal impacts created by privatized fishing in this series of highly poignant personal stories of fishermen and businessmen dreaming big. She writes in a tough-talk journalistic style with detailed settings and background. In one particularly poignant essay, she describes a fisherperson and their often dangerous work.
"Harvey works by tungsten light in the night, a long line of rope rising up from the water through the bait-shed door, machines pulling it along beside him. Hook after hook of sablefish comes with it. And Harvey is hitting each one with a gaffe- a kind of metal hook- lifting them on board and into a hauling chute.”
Detailed sources at the close of the book regarding everything from fishery death statistics to content of fish sandwiches to job loss to interviews with fishermen, this book includes interviews with Alaskan First Nations clans, historical details about areas, police records, stories of the work of the environmental defence fund and various EDF campaigns, details about catch-share and catch-share lawsuits throughout the world, and creates a human background story to some of thr largest legal actions in the world of corporete fishing. It's an excellent book that I reccomended to anyone interested in more than a veiled idea of what is on your dinnerplate.
The biggest take-away for me from this book is summed up in the line, "consumers shouldn't have to buy sustainability from Wall Street or choose between the environment and their fisherman.” Truly, the public needs to have a stronger role. We need as a society to understand where our food comes from, who labours in the harvesting of it and what environmental factors are impacted. Without this holistic approach, including understanding the inevitable politics at play, decisions about our food chain will be made in boardrooms far, far from our table.
Lee, V. der V. (2016). The fish market: Inside the big money battle for the ocean and your dinner plate. St. Martin's Press.
