Bottomfeeder: How the Fish on Our Plates Is Killing Our Planet. This item is unavailable.Bottomfeeder: How the Fish on Our Plates Is Killing Our Planet

There's simply no limit to the sins people will commit for a tasty meal. The Japanese are notorious for their trade in bluefin tuna, served up to diners at almost illegal prices, while newlyweds in Bangkok, Shanghai and Singapore devour a gelatinous soup made from poached abalone and fins hacked from living sharks. But surely there's no need for you to feel bad about ordering sea bass in a London restaurant? Unless, of course, you consider that you may well be enjoying one of the very last members of the species. And that's before you contemplate the chemicals being pumped into the farmed prawns and salmon that now fill supermarket shelves.In "Bottomfeeder", we follow Taras Grescoe on a year-long, round-the-world trip, as he eats his way from the top to the bottom of the food chain with one purpose in mind: to find out whether he can continue to eat such delicacies in good conscience. As well as painting a vivid and often hilarious picture of the fascinating people Taras encounters, "Bottomfeeder" explores the impact we are having on sea life by overfishing and draws our attention to some of the ethical choices we can make. At a time when many of the fish we take for granted are on the verge of extinction, we need to face the fact that very soon jellyfish sandwiches may be all that is left for us to eat.

Taras Grescoe is the author of The Devil's Picnic: A Tour of Everything the Governments of the World Don't Want You to Try and Bottomfeeder: How the Fish on Our Plates is Killing Our Planet. He also wrote Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec, which was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Award, won the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, and was a national bestseller in Canada. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Salon, Conde Nast Traveller, the Independent, The Times and National Geographic Traveller. He also writes for Saveur, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Wired and Chicago Tribune Magazine. He lives in Montréal, Canada.