Salmon: A Scientific Memoir

by Jude Isabella

Salmon: A Scientific Memoir" investigates a narrative that is important to the identity of the Pacific Northwest Coast--the salmon as an iconic species. Traditionally it's been a narrative that is overwhelmingly about conflict. But is that always necessarily the case?The story follows John Steinbeck's advice: the best way to achieve reality is to combine narrative with scientific data. By following ecologists, archaeologists and fisheries biologists studying salmon, humans and their shared habitat, the reader learns about the fish through the eyes of scientists in the field.Each chapter focuses on a portion of the salmon's journey to and from their natal streams; on one of the five Pacific salmon species most commercially important to North Americans; and on the different ways scientists study the fish. It's also about the scientific journey of ecologists, archaeologists and fisheries biologists and how the labs gathering data today echo coastal indigenous people who have harvested salmon successfully since the end of the last ice age. Each group established a reciprocal economic system, one that revolves around community and knowledge, a system with straightforward rules, sometimes as simple as "you get what you give.

Genres: Science

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 7, 2014

About the author

Jude Isabella has written for The Walrus, Nautilus, Slate, New Scientist, the Loh Down on Science, Medical Post, WILD Magazine, Archaeology Magazine, BC Magazine, BBC Wildlife Magazine, Spirituality and Health Magazine, and The Tyee, focusing on science, health, and the environment. She also spent more than a decade as the managing editor of YES Mag, the Science Magazine for Adventurous Minds.

She also writes science books for kids. Her book Fantastic Feats and Failures, published by Kids Can Press, won the American Institute of Physics award for writing in the children’s category. They gave her an engraved Windsor chair, the best award ever.

Reviews

[Zenith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't feel that I learned much that I didn't know before, but I enjoyed this celebration of inquiry into salmon. For all that is understood, still, so little remains unexplored about these fish and their relationships within their ecosystem.

I did not know about the differing responses to warming oceans on the five species and potential for pinks to act as colonizers in a warming world.

I also appreciated the concluding chapter about First Nations relationships to salmon and other ocean resource; what has been handed down and what nations are trying to reclaim.

In general, I would recommend the book, but primarily to people either from northwest cities who haven't spent time observing salmon or, perhaps more importantly, people outside the northwest who don't know the issues surrounding a sustainable pacific salmon fishery.

[Travis Webber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a lab scientist, not a field one, but I thought this book did an excellent job of capturing how science is actually done. I especially liked that the author was brave enough to describe her mistakes while working with the people she interviewed. THAT'S science.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting albeit a mile wide and an inch deep.

[Andre Hermanto · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite the delicious subject matter, this is a fairly boring book about various studies on salmon.