Author Karen Pinchin has given us a gift. It is her perfectly paced, exquisitely written work of creative nonfiction. Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our Seas is filled with well-researched details, skillfully woven around a gripping, multi-layered narrative. Pinchin’s writing is often poetic, always informed, and flows with the pulsating sensation of an adventure driven page-turner.
Pinchin’s writing is often poetic, always informed, and flows with the pulsating sensation of an adventure driven page-turner … It is a transforming piece of work.
Prior to tagging the bluefin tuna, it was thought that it would stay within its own community, where there were large concentrations. Scientist Frank J. Mather III and Bob Linton, a well-known boat builder and charter fisherman, began tagging bluefin tuna. “In 1962, one fish tagged off the Bahamas migrated nearly 10,000 kilometres in 50 days and was caught off Norway’s coast. That fish moved at such high speeds that it traveled a distance of nearly five consecutive marathons every day for more than a month.” This discovery and its process changed everything!
New England charter fisherman Al Anderson was determined to tag as many bluefin as he could. In his career, Al Anderson tagged over 60,000 bluefin tuna, creating a passionate tracking of the fish that opened up a tenuous debate between environmental concerns and commercial demand. Karen Pinchin expertly pursues the data from Portugal to Japan, New Jersey to Nova Scotia, and global stops in between.
From the publisher, Knopf Canada:
“In 2004, an enigmatic charter captain named Al Anderson caught and tagged one Atlantic bluefin tuna off New England’s coast. Fourteen years later that same fish—dubbed Amelia for her ocean-spanning journeys—was caught again, this time in a Mediterranean fish trap.”
Our desire for the delicious tuna grew at record speed. It was first advertised in 1954 in the USA as a canned replacement for chicken. Japan tripled their annual catch of bluefin in 1962-1965, and then our taste for tuna exploded, as munching sushi can be found in neighbourhood restaurants everywhere.
But, bluefin tuna was also fished for sport. In 1935, in Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, bluefin fishing saw a boom in tourism from our American neighbours and wealthy travellers worldwide. Fishing for sport was born.
“Those huge bluefin, found nowhere else in the world, rapidly transformed Wedgeport into a major tourist town, and the money and opportunity flowing from those fish transformed lives across the region. … With every huge fish landed on Wedgeport’s docks or left to die hanging from a giant beam in the sun, groups of anglers posing in front of its body, the Atlantic bluefin population lost some of its most powerful, most prodigious breeding adults. Fisherman gave those fish away, threw them away, or sold them for pennies.”
P.79
But the giant boost to the economy of Wedgeport based on the sport of fishing bluefin, a natural resource, was destined for doom.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. I found out so much more than I bargained for when I cracked open this book. A religious group who wanted to own the ocean’s bluefin at any cost, the commercial fishing that almost killed off the bluefin, and the sport of bluefin fishing that diminished the population of this water’s fish but grew a thriving profit centre on land. There’s also a billion-dollar black market industry, commercial big money at stake around the globe, a 642-pound bluefin named Amelia, and so much more. Mostly, I learned that there is much to do and one person’s choices make a difference.
Scientists, governments, and people around the world are taking notice. Pinchin stresses that the choices we make today truly matter. There is hope for our oceans and for the bluefin. Kings of Their Own Ocean makes the case that it’s not too late. There’s plenty we can do to preserve our fish population and the astounding beauty of our oceans.
Kings of Their Own Ocean by Karen Pinchin is a standout. It has opened my mind, fed me information, offered options, and dazzled me. Pinchin has done it all within her glorious accomplishment, Kings of Their Own Ocean. It is a transforming piece of work.
KAREN PINCHIN is an award-winning investigative journalist and culinary school graduate. A recent Tow Fellow at PBS’s Frontline, she graduated from Columbia Journalism School with a master of arts in science journalism and has since been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Sloan Foundation. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, Canadian Geographic, Hakai Magazine, The Globe and Mail, and The Walrus, among other outlets. She lives, writes, and fishes in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with her husband, son, and a tankful of guppies.
Publisher: Knopf Canada (July 18, 2023)
Hardcover 9″ x 6″ | 320 pages
ISBN: 9781039000629
TMR’s Managing Editor Carrie Stanton has a BA in Political Science from the University of Calgary. She is the author of The Jewel and Beast Bot, and picture books, Emmie and the Fierce Dragon and The Gardener. Carrie loves to write stories that grow wings and transport readers everywhere. She reads and enjoys stories from every genre.