| Book Review | Environmental History, 14.1

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 14.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America. By H. Bruce Franklin. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2007. 265 pp. Illustrations, maps, table, notes, and index. Cloth $25.00.
The lowly menhaden, cousin to the herring, is an unloved fish. It is ugly, bony, and oily. But it was long the basis of the largest fisheries of the United States, far outstripping the haul of more famous species until recently. Menhaden, unlike most fish in Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico waters, eat plankton, which exist in unimaginable profusion. So menhaden too have the potential to flourish abundantly. But menhaden also make an easy target, because they school, and because bluefish, striped bass, and other predators serve as unwitting guides to the location of menhaden. Thus it serves as a cheap source of fishmeal for poultry and hogs, and of fish oil, which has countless uses. If Melville had written an epic about menhaden instead of whaling, he might have begun it: "Call me fishmeal."	1
This book tells the story of the American menhaden. The author, a professor of English and American studies, has written a shelf of books about Vietnam literature, prison literature, and Herman Melville, is also a keen angler in New Jersey waters.	. . .

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