A01=Kevin M. Bailey
alaska
aleutians
Author_Kevin M. Bailey
bering
california
Category=KNAF
Category=NHTB
Category=RN
conservation
deflection
ecology
ed ricketts
environment
environmental history
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fisheries
gemini
habitat
indigenous
king crab
marine life
monterey
native american
nonfiction
overfishing
pacific northwest
perch
politics
population
salinas
sardine seiner
science
sea of cortez
steinbeck
swinomish slough
washington
west coast
western flyer
wild salmon
Product details
- ISBN 9780226116761
- Weight: 340g
- Dimensions: 14 x 22mm
- Publication Date: 20 Mar 2015
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In January, 2010, the Gemini was moored in the Swinomish Slough on a Native American reservation near Anacortes, Washington. Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the rusted and dilapidated boat was in fact the most famous fishing vessel ever to have sailed: the original Western Flyer, immortalized in John Steinbeck's nonfiction classic The Log from the Sea of Cortez. In this book, Kevin M. Bailey resurrects this forgotten witness to the changing tides of Pacific fisheries. He draws on the Steinbeck archives, interviews with family members of crew, and more than three decades working in Pacific Northwest fisheries to trace the depletion of marine life through the voyages of a single ship. After Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts - a pioneer in the study of the West Coast's diverse sea life and the inspiration behind "Doc" in Cannery Row-chartered the boat for their now - famous 1940 expedition, the Western Flyer returned to its life as a sardine seiner in California.
But when the sardine fishery in Monterey collapsed, the boat moved on: fishing for Pacific Ocean perch off Washington, king crab in the Bering Sea off Alaska, and finally wild Pacific salmon - all industries that would also face collapse. As the Western Flyer herself faces an uncertain future - a businessman has bought her, intending to bring the boat to Salinas, California, and turn it into a restaurant feature just blocks from Steinbeck's grave - debates about the status of the California sardine, and of West Coast fisheries generally, have resurfaced. With a compelling and timely tale of a boat and the people it carried, of fisheries exploited, and of fortunes won and lost, The Western Flyer is environmental history at its best: a journey through time and across the sea, charting the ebb and flow of the cobalt waters of the Pacific coast.
Kevin M. Bailey is the founding director of Man & Sea Institute and affiliate professor at the University of Washington. He formerly was a senior scientist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and is the author of Billion-Dollar Fish: The Untold Story of Alaska Pollock, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
