A Naturalist Goes Fishing: Casting in Fragile Waters from the Gulf of Mexico to New Zealand’s South Island

McClintock (Lost Antarctica), a marine biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, combines work and play as he brings together tales of his professional career studying underwater habitats and a lifetime of recreational fishing. Recalling field and fishing trips in different parts of the world, McClintock uses them as segues to more general discussions about the environment. For instance, a story about speckled trout fishing in the Chandeleur Islands, a chain of uninhabited islands 30 miles off the Louisiana coast, leads to talk of wetlands and “raw untamed scenery.” A year after Hurricane Katrina hit the region, fishing captains still hadn’t returned, McClintock notes, due to the danger of submerged hazards as well as the “demise of the speck and red fishery.” Similarly, accounts of fishing for yellowfin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico precede sobering descriptions of havoc wreaked by the blowout of the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. That disaster continues to affect the Gulf’s economy and natural environment. By juxtaposing personal meditations on fishing stories with more academic sections on such topics as erosion and pollution, McClintock entices readers to absorb his cautionary tales about the continued health of the world’s waterways. [em](Nov.) [/em]