Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate

"I think what I really like about it is the way he shows the connections between people and a species. He looks at, for example, Native American groups who paint salmon on stones and rub them, hoping to absorb the qualities of the salmon: vitality and endurance. One of the reasons I wanted to write my own book is that it’s interesting to see how cultures are informed by the creatures they live alongside. When these creatures are gone, we have a great loss of cultural connection. It’s much easier to see it in other peoples than ourselves; we don’t see that the nightingale is an essential part of England, for example. In many ways, it’s a deeply depressing book. We have tried to tame the salmon and exploit it, through salmon farms. But it informs our sense of place and time so strongly; people would know that it was spring, because that’s when the salmon came back. It’s interesting how our sense of rhythm through life is informed by the coming and going of other species. And there’s a global connection, too, through the salmon’s migration—it means so many things to so many different groups, different peoples but they connect us all. I was rereading the Kurlansky during lockdown and it made me think that even when the world was shut up and closed there were these threads running around the globe in the water and in the sky being created by migrating salmon and swallows and turtle doves going to Africa and so on. Places are connected to other places by wild creatures. To lose the salmon—and Kurlansky makes it very clear that we might—would be to live in a more disconnected world."