If you lose your salmon, do you lose your soul?

• Author: Mark Boyden
• Date: 19 December 2020
• Published date: 19 December 2020

Apart from a few whimsical meanders into a history of fly-tying and samples of salmon recipes from various cultures, it is a brutal and stark account of the relentless pressures generated by a grand "Manifest Destiny" mentality which accepts the extinction of an ancient icon as a small, hardly accountable cost to achieve the ambitions of hydro power, forestry exploitation, urbanisation, mining, irrigation et al.

We are taken on a tour of how zoologists consider salmon to be a "keystone species", as not only is their presence proof of the viability of an entire suite of similarly pollution- intolerant species "below" them (from microscopic diatoms through to aquatic insects and other fish species) but that they also represent key nutrition for many species "above" them including bears, wolves, seals, orcas, otters, and birds of prey.

Because of the anadromous (inhabiting both fresh and salt waters) nature of salmon, the spoils of this diet provide important dispersal of marine minerals across the landscape. These catalyse the formation of a complex mosaic of woodlands, wildflower meadows and other habitats, which then moderate the pristine streams and rivers which serve as nursery for the salmon. This is the Gaia theory in a nutshell; that all life and habitat develops as one grand organism to shape and perpetuate all denizens in an ever-evolving arc which is able to intelligently respond, through the ages, to climate change or cataclysmic upheaval (volcano, earthquake, landslide, etc).

Enter man. Across diverse geographies, from the Japanese archipelago across the Aleutians, from the St Lawrence to the Columbia, and the Rhine to the Loire, Kurlansky takes us through Old Testament-inspired...