I enjoyed this lively little book about the history of cod. What could seem like an obscure topic for a history book turned out to be an entertaining and very informative narrrative about a species of fish that has sparked war, shaped international political discourse, impacted diverse cultures, markets, and the environment. The author did a good job of weaving in odd little facts within the larger discussion. Seems a bit ironic that he would lamment the near extinction of the fish while simultaneously offering up cod recipes. The book really focuses on the North Atlantic cod, and he gives only brief mention to Pacific cod toward the end of the book. The relative history focuses on the Nordic waters so it makes sense, but I expected a little more about the Pacific fishing dynamic. In contrast with Salt: A World History by the same author, which I read last year, the flow in Cod was much more organized and overall I found it to be a better book. Both books the author has a tendancy to follow a tangent in the middle of a story, but he gets back to his point, you have to wander with him from time to time to get there. Overall well written and enjoyable. Pictures and drawings are few but very helpful.

Interesting book on the mighty cod. Much of the focus is on fisheries of the NE US and Newfoundland but it does remind us that many of the discoveries of the New World had actually been undertaken many years before by fishermen, whalers and sealers. Written 20 years ago, it is a bit dated at the start and end but the middle bits on the history is full of fun facts and easy to read.

Kurlansky is one of my favorite writers and in this book, he writes about the history of the Cod fish and the cod fish industry in this book. Though this was not my favorite of all his books it was quite interesting. I learned a lot of information about Cod fish and industrial fishing. There is also a section on cod recipes.

“If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod--the common fish. But it has among its predators man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod.”






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I love books like this in which a very narrow topic gives broad insight into our world. This story tells the history of cod fishing, the Basque were one of the first grps. to successfully & secretly fish for cod on a commercial scale, all the way to modern fishing techniques in which schools of fish could be located & over-fished through GPS. Cod fishing brought wealth to many nations, became a treasured part of many diets (Its high protein count made it a valuable source of protein in the centuries when it was hard to find.), and created a fishing lifestyle for millions. This book is also a story of environmental hubris; the legend is that if every fish egg reached its full maturity, one could have walked across the Atlantic on the backs of cod! Cod has virtually disappeared, leaving many fishing villages as ghost towns. While I was reading Cod, I kept thinking, will the blue fin tuna be the next fish species to disappear from our oceans?
Kurlansky weaves a fascinating fish tale in Cod, and I'm not exaggerating!

Who knew a fish has had such an impact on our history?

3.75 stars. Parts were super interesting- others not so much. An interesting read, for sure!

With the onset of another summer I sought a nonfiction book rather than a novel to set the mood. I enjoy biographies, but truly how much can be said through “A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World: Cod”?

Since birth I spent many days in Harwich Port on Cape Cod with my grandparents. As an angler the term “cod” was ingrained in my brain at an early age. At times in the 1950’s and 60’s the highlight of my day was watching the vibrant colorful commercial fishing vessels, riding low in the water, approach the Chatham Pier Fish Market. Upon delivery the iced cod and haddock were stabbed with a hay rake or shoveled into a large metal bins and hoisted into the fish house for preparation and sale on the on the premises. Additionally I worked every college summer in Harwich Port on the grounds of Thompson’s Clam Bar the #1 volume family restaurant on the Cape and largest seasonal restaurant east of the Mississippi where many fish (cod) & chips were served, along with the adjacent Wychmere Harbor Club, one of the most photographed private clubs in Massachusetts, also owned by Frank Thompson, where quality broiled cod were often presented on a white and blue china plate. Later I worked in downtown Boston known as the city of “beans and cod”. My grandmother believed in the healing effects of cod liver oil and my doctor has always encouraged me to eat cold water fish twice a week. It was with this background that I opened the book’s cover.

For centuries the simple cod fish did have a major impact upon world societies. The book had a good flow and I was intrigued by the numerous historical facts. Salt certainly provided preservation for sales of cod. I noted that my grandfather, who was born in Denmark, resided in Harwich Port on Cape Cod. I found it interesting that the word “wich” is an Anglo-Saxon term for “a place that has salt”.

Mark Kurbansky received high praise and awards for this release in 1997 and his recognition is justified. It’s a unique biography complete with cultural recipes and an index.

Okay, so I shed a tear at the end. I couldn’t help it. The cod’s tale is quite tragic. I love history and anthropology; therefore, I love this book. Cod by Mark Kurlansky is interesting and fact filled, and I find that presenting recipes and fun information related to the cod throughout and at the end is a nice touch and a welcome respite from the narrative.

I am appalled (but not surprised) at the lengths to which humans will go to discover, hunt, exploit, manipulate, and wipe out a food source, in this case, the cod. We have proved over and over that we can be exterminators, and we have yet to practice moderation when it comes to commodities and satiating our desires. Additionally, we are tenacious in the face of change and adaptive when change is inevitable.

Cod gives us a glimpse into the fish that continues to impact our lives in North America, Europe, Britain, Iceland, and many other lands. This fish really gets around.

This book shows us the path the cod has taken throughout history, with the help of human hands, ingenuity, greed, and death: from salting/curing/drying for consumption during long voyages to doling out a cheap, nutritious meal to slaves to freezing breaded fish fillets and fish sticks. The cod has been through it all, and we have had the audacity to try and gobble every last one.

With my close ties to Britain, I have enjoyed the traditional fish and chips many times without ever questioning the type of fish (often cod or haddock) or its harrowing journey to my newspaper cone. As a consumer, perhaps I need to become more mindful.

This biography is well written and, based on the bibliography, well researched.

***
“But technology never reverses itself. It creates new technology to confront new sets of problems.”

“Nature remains focused on survival.”

***
It looks like Costco purchases wild Alaskan cod and wild Icelandic cod.

Interesting book (I've actually read it twice, about 2 years apart), who knew that cod was so central to the history of western Europe and North America.

The book makes an argument I'd never heard before that Basques from Spain had been coming to North America regularly before Columbus ever got here, but never declared it cause they didn't want anyone else pouching their fishing grounds (apparently when the first British got here they even commented on all the Basque ships, but since they had never formally declared the ground for Spain -- why would they? -- the British declared it for themselves).

It then goes through the whole history of nations that rose on the back of cod, and how eventually almost every location that had been rich in cod was over-fished practically to extinction, and how there are no longer enough cod in those waters to support fishermen, even if they were allowed to fish them. How the Fisherman (who don't want to give up fishing as a profession, because they love it) refuse to realize and or accept this...

Almost every chapter begins with a cod recipe, and then the book finishes off with a large selection of fish recipes -- the last chapter is almost ALL cod recipes

I found the chapter on the Cod Wars between England and Iceland particularly fascinating (yay for Iceland, although they are unfortunately not behaving well in the current mackerel crisis). Also the history of Newfoundland and the effects of both their joining with Canada and the overfishing. When they voted to join Canada, the central government had other far more important industries to support, so ignored the local fishing industry's concerns about overfishing. If they'd voted to stay with Britain, or go independent, I wonder what could have happened?
Gloucester, Massachusetts featured in the closing chapters, so I'll have to read The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic & Survival in Gloucester, America's Oldest Fishing Port & Most Original Town too.
A truly depressing read, really. If you're looking for motivation to give up fish, this is it. With cod commercially extinct, people turned to other species, and wiped them out too. Some cod stop migrating, others spawn at a far younger age than normal, and they're appearing in unpredictable places. Because of this (and the vastness of the oceans) it's basically impossible to predict how many of a species there are, so how high a safe quota is for sustainable fishing. Wipe out one species and both their predators and prey are affected. Other predators move in on the now-abundant prey, so even if humans stop fishing the cod, their food chain is messed up.
We're a sad, sad species.

Cod begins with two quotes:

1. Thomas Henry Huxley says that "the question of questions for mankind . . . is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things."

I love that quote because humans, at least the "civilized" ones, think of themselves as somewhat separated from nature.

2. Will and Ariel Durant in The Lessons of History say "the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. . . . peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths overrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law."

The fight for fish is for food and control of the oceans.

This book was copyrighted 1997. I am curious about the situation then, and I wonder if any progress has been made.

In July 1992, the Canadian government closed down the Newfoundland waters, the Grand Banks, and most of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to groundfishing. Fishermen had been demanding this for years. Their catch in numbers and size had been declining for years. Cod are bottom dwelling fish, and trawlers had been taking every last cod. Fishermen were helping scientists by gathering statistics. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that science must prove its conclusions. They can't just say, we better slow down here because the situation "looks" pretty bad.

It is not only the cod that are gone, but the whales, herring, capelin, and squid. Fishermen used to catch cod on shore with traps.

Petty Harbour banned mass fishing techniques such as longlining and gillnetting since the 1940s. But it was not done for conservation, it was done to make room for all the boats.

The people of Petty Harbour are "at the wrong end of a 1,000-year fishing spree."

Cod are omniverous. They eat everything. They swim with their mouths open and swallow everything that fits, including young cod. So fishermen just use a cod jigger made of lead. I wondered why the author failed to mention what a deadly poison lead is.

Cod are thus easy to catch but not much fun for sportsmen. Bluefish fight but they are oily. People prefer the white flesh of cod. We must change some of our eating habits and eat other fish.

A forty inch female cod can produce three million eggs. A fish ten inches longer can produce nine million eggs. A good reason to let the fish grow. In all nature, lots of eggs means lots of deaths. Here is an incredible statement: "If each female cod in a lifetime of millions of eggs produces two juveniles that live to be sexually mature adults, the population is stable."

The first reports of cod off the Maine coast were incredible. "Codfish as big as a man." John Cabot reported people catching them with baskets there were so many. In 1895, a codfish weighing 211 pounds was reported. In 1649, there was also a report of six-foot lobsters.

What have we done. Large animals cannot survive alongside humans.

From the middle of the 1500s to the middle of the 1700s, 60% of all fish eaten in Europe was cod.

The turning point comes on Page 75: "New Englanders were growing rich on free-trade capitalism. . . . Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century economist, singled out the New England fishery for praise in his singular work on capitalism, The Wealth of Nations. To Smith, the fishery was an exciting example of how an economy could flourish if individuals were given an unrestricted commercial environment."

That type of thinking still goes on today. Eliminate regulations and we will flourish. Get rid of those dastardly government agencies like the EPA and the money flows.

Everyone thought such a free-wheeling system could work forever.

People became rich on cod. Carvings of the fish were everywhere.

There is the unpleasantness of selling cheap fish for slaves.

Slaves could be picked up by cod merchants in West Africa. And more cod could be sold there. To this day there is still a West African market for cod sales.

There was often a moral contradiction between freedom loving New Englanders and social injustices.

Cod has to be fished out of water that is 34 to 50 degrees. Fishermen used to wear thick rubber gloves with cotton linings. Now there are new synthetic materials. They lost fingers from frostbite, line snags, and machinery. There is a sense of camaraderie, brotherhood. They are like combat veterans who feel only understood by their comrades who have survived the same battles. Any fisherman who can't keep up is out. Very few are over 50. Fog was one of the biggest enemies. Dorymen used to drown or starve to death or die of thirst while being lost in the fog. Too much fish could sink a dory. One reason is that they worked with little sleep. One doryman called it "a terrifying death without witness in the cottony fog that stifles all sound. Like a nightmare from which there is no awakening."

I point out the difficulties of fishermen in order to understand them. They are independent. They don't like government officials and land lovers trying to tell them how to do their job, even if it is for their own good. I have been to Gloucester many times. I have seen the memorial to dead fishermen. It is both prominent and powerful. There are always random tourists reading off random names. Between 1830 and 1900, about 3,800 Gloucester fishermen were "lost at sea." In a 1985 Canadian government report, 212 out of every 100,000 Canadian fishermen die on the job. That's far more than miners, foresters, and construction workers. In Britain, the rate of death for fishermen is 20 times higher than manufacturing.

Longlines with hooks can be as short as half a mile or can extend for four or five miles. They catch many fish, all of which now are noticeably smaller. This caused improving catches which fooled people into believing the stocks were not being depleted.

Freezing fish made a big difference. It meant more fish could be taken.

Bottom nets left the ocean floor a desert. Mesh size could help, but once the back wall is filled with cod, the small fish are trapped. "Millions of unwanted fish--undesirable species, fish that are undersized or over quota, even fish with a low market price this week--are tossed overboard, usually dead."

Now schools of fish are detected by sonar or spotter aircraft. A trawler can move in and clean out the area. They take the target fish and the by-catch.

"There is only one known calculation: 'When you get to zero, it will produce zero.' How much above zero still produces zero is not known." In the big ocean, how can you tell when it's too late to rebuild the stock?

"Overfishing is a growing global problem. About 60% of the fish types tracked by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) are categorized as fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted." I wonder what the percent is now?

Ninety percent of the world's fishing grounds are now closed off by 200-mile exclusion zones. Fishermen switched to fishing at greater depths. Little is known about the ecology there.

Some countries are just not known for their international cooperation.

Seals are our competitors for fish.

Cod seemed to have stopped migrating. One theory is that bigger, older fish are no longer there to lead the way.

With climate change on the rise, we are on a deadly path to destruction. The warming oceans welcome predators from warmer waters to the south and make it difficult for cod to reproduce. We are the proverbial frog in the pot of water waiting for it to boil. It is probably already too late for us to jump out.

Gorton's is still in Gloucester, the largest plant with the biggest sign, but the company hasn't bought a fish from a Gloucester fisherman in years.