Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

O Bacalhau quer'alho...

This was interesting, covering the history of cod fishing all over the place, but mostly Canada, Iceland/Greenland and the demand for salt-cod in Spain, the West Indies and of course Britain.

For me however it missed a trick, and I would have liked to have a part of the book focus on the fish, not the fishing. There was a void where the scientific details of the many types of cod could have been explored and assessed. Instead we get a few of these types of facts spread through the narrative. For me, the “Biography of the fish that changed the world” needed to have this detail around the fish. A more accurate title would have replaced the word ‘fish' with ‘fishing'

But we get a good history of the fishing techniques and the boats, and we get an detailed history of the fishing grounds, the trade routes, the laws, the wars and the politics. Also worth a mention are the recipes spread through the book, and a concentration of these at the end however these all got a bit samey for me.

There are a lot of reviews already which explain the histories from the Basque voyaging to Canada to fish but keeping it secret for so long to the commercial operators today without cod to catch. I wouldn't do it justice here to try and pull together a narrative.

For me, just a 3 star read, with the biography missing its main component! If you are less interested in cod and more interested in cod fishing and it's history, this may be the book for you.

An enjoyable read. Full of plenty of information that had one thinking. The resistance to the obvious decline of the cod by vested interests may have parallels in the resistance to changing our use of fossil fuels by the coal industry, as an example. I also have done a bit of online research as to how this wonderful fish has been going now that there has been a moratorium on its fishing. Not as well as I thought it might of sadly.

On a lighter side I enjoyed the recipes that frequent the end of each chapter with plenty more at the end. Anyway I'm hungry and have some Barramundi to devour.

The codfish lays a thousand eggs
The homely hen lays one.
The codfish never cackles
To tell you what she's done.
And so we scorn the codfish
While the humble hen we prize
Which only goes to show you
That it pays to advertise.