Seas the Day! - Book of the Month

Each month in 2007, The Ocean Project will highlight a book focused on our blue planet or environmental sustainability. Books for all age groups will be covered, non-fiction and fiction, prose and poetry. If you have a suggestion, please let us know.

Hooked: Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish
by G. Bruce Knecht

Hooked is a fast-paced story about the poaching of the Patagonian toothfish (marketed and known to many seafood eaters as "Chilean Sea Bass") and is built around the pursuit of an illegal long-liner fishing vessel (the Viarsa) by an Australian patrol boat, Southern Supporter. The amazing chase lasted 21 days and the boats covered 4,000 nautical miles. It's an "extraordinary story of a remarkable fish, the men who prey upon it, and the people who battle to save it from extinction", states WGBH.

Knecht traces how the Patagonian toothfish went from an obscure, unappealing fish to "White Gold", a favorite target of fleets of "pirate" fishing vessels. It all started when a California fish merchant Lee Lantz, renamed the rather ugly, unappetizing-looking Patagonian toothfish as "Chilean sea bass", soon creating a worldwide craze for this white-fleshed fish. As seafood consumers got hooked, and demands for the fish increased, illegal fishing boats stepped up to fill market demand, and help satiate diners' appetite for this long-lived fish. The situation with the fish was so dire that ocean conservation groups created a campaign, "Take a Pass on Chilean Sea Bass". These groups have been concerned due to the natural history of this fish: it is long-lived, slow growing and doesn't reproduce until it is approximately 10 years old. These types of fish species are particularly vulnerable to overfishing.

Hooked combines adventure with a fascinating exploration of illegal fishing brought on by market demand and takes a revealing look at the probably irreversible consequences of the pursuit of what to many chefs and diners is the "perfect" fish. The Chilean sea bass is about six feet long when fully grown, and possesses the rich taste of tuna and a buttery texture that appeals to many seafood eaters around the world. Many seafood chefs like the fish because it nearly always tastes good, no matter how it is cooked.

Author Bruce Knecht is a Hong Kong-based foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and has also written The Proving Grounds. His work has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Condé Nast Traveler, New York Times Magazine, and SAIL.

Hooked is a fish story, a global whodunit, a courtroom drama - and a critically important ecological message all rolled into one.

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