July 7, 2013 — Seattle author Kevin Bailey’s “Billion-Dollar Fish” chronicles the race among fishermen from different countries to exploit the immense stocks of pollock in the North Pacific.
Alaska pollock is the stuff of fish sticks, fish oil and artificial crab. It is a lowly fish, not emblematic of Native American culture or particularly prized by chefs. But it amounts to 40 percent of the U.S. commercial fish catch, and feeds a billion-dollar industry based in Seattle.
In “Billion Dollar Fish,” the story of the pollock boom of the 1980s and 1990s is told by Kevin Bailey, who for three decades was a fisheries scientist at Seattle’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Bailey has written dozens of scientific papers about pollock. The penalty for the reader is that in his chapter on biology he delves into the science more deeply than some will want to go. But he knows his fish, and comes at the topic neither in the pocket of the industry nor its environmental critics.
Much of his book is a business story. In economic terms, pollock is a latecomer, a species known for decades before Americans figured out how to exploit it. The fishing grounds in the Bering Sea are remote and dangerous, and per pound the fish is far less valuable than crab or salmon.
Read the full story at The Seattle Times