Dead Reckoning: Confronting the Crisis in Pacific Fisheries (David Suzuki Foundation Series)

Abundant fish along North America's West Coast Coast have nurtured rich and diverse cultures for centuries. But today millions of sockeye salmon routinely seem to "disappear" from the Fraser River, chinook salmon populations are collapsing, the abalone fishery is one of several that has been shut down and oolichan populations are in dramatic decline. At the same time, biodiversity is being lost as the remaining stocks are concentrated into fewer populations. Will the Pacific fishery go the way of the Atlantic fishery? How can it be better managed? And what can be done to ensure its long-term sustainability? In Dead Reckoning, award-winning journalist Terry Glavin attempts to answer these troublesome questions. He begins at Byrne Creek, a local stream that shaped his boyhood world, then takes us up the Fraser River, where Coyote once assigned fishing rights and techniques, and out onto the high seas. It is later than we think - but not too late, says Glavin. In precise, highly visual and moving prose, he presents concrete alternatives for fishing communities on the West Coast and around the globe, and introduces us to some of the fishers, biologists and "average citizens" who are working to conserve and restore the world's great fisheries today.