The Founding Fish

by John McPhee
358 pages; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York; ISBN: 0-374-10444-1; 2002

Reviewed by Christian Lawrence, Book Review Editor, Conservation Perspectives

If only we all had the connections of John McPhee, who is, among other things, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Annals of a Former World and a staff writer for the New Yorker. Then perhaps we could have virtually every question about our favorite subject in the world answered by a seemingly boundless list of experts on the topic. Sadly, this is not the case for most of us; McPhee, however, gets to indulge himself, and he generously shares the experience with us in the form of his latest book, The Founding Fish.

The object of McPhee’s veneration – and thus the subject of the book – is the American shad (Alosa sapidissima) an anadromous fish native to the Atlantic coast of North America from Newfoundland to Florida. Each spring, when thousands of sexually mature shad return to their natal river systems to spawn, they are eagerly met by thousands of avid fishermen and fisherwomen. These shad fanatics have been fidgeting about for the better part of a year waiting for the chance to fling their darts (typical lure used in shad fishing) into a river in the hopes of connecting with one of these silvery, powerful animals. John McPhee is such a person.

The book begins, as it ends, with McPhee on the Delaware River near his home, fishing for shad. From the outset, the reader is swept up into the larger story of the American shad – its biology, habitat, and place in American culture and history – through the experiences of a fisherman who wonders many things about his favorite quarry. In the introductory chapter, these musings form tantalizing snippets of information. These brief, informative asides are preludes to the later chapters in which McPhee – with the assistance of many others – will delve deeper into various aspects of the fish that he so enjoys pursuing.

There is something for everyone in this book. Fishing enthusiasts will no doubt enjoy McPhee’s numerous and always colorful accounts of fishing for shad in rivers up and down the Atlantic coast and his discussions with grizzled shad fishermen – “living figures in the Cooperstown of shad.”

Those with an interest in history will particularly appreciate McPhee’s exploration of the role that the American shad played in the political and cultural history of the United States. He touches upon scores of examples, including a lively debate about whether or not the shad run up the Schuylkill River in the spring of 1779 was the “salvation” of George Washington (a commercial shad fisherman himself) and his starving army camped along its frozen banks.

Above all, The Founding Fish is a book for the “fish-heads” of the world, those people with a keen thirst for knowledge of all things that have to do with fishes, the most diverse of all vertebrate taxa. Using the strategy that he employed with great success in Annals of a Former World, McPhee picks the brains of notable ichthyologists about various aspects of shad ecology, behavior, life history, population biology, anatomy, physiology, and conservation.

McPhee gets to tag along –in the field and in the laboratory – with Boyd Kynard and Willy Bemis, fish biologists from the University of Massachusetts. Like all good biologists, Kynard and Bemis are veritable founts of information, and the author is able to tap them both with great success. Highlights include Kynard’s haunting account of chasing sturgeon (another anadromous fish) up the Danube River in the war-torn Balkans, and a wonderfully revealing passage in which McPhee cleans a shad in his usual way, except that this time Bemis describes, in anatomical terms, what McPhee is cutting as he cuts it.

As McPhee putters about in various shad habitats with the likes of Bemis and Kynard, the book becomes in some ways less of an encyclopedia of shad and more of a primer on fish biology. The happy result of this transformation is that most readers will come away from the book knowing a heck of a lot more about fishes (and most certainly more about shad) than they did before they picked it up. This is a good thing in a world where most people know precious little about the natural world around them.

The book also covers a sweeping range of other subjects, including river alteration (dam building and dam busting), the rise and fall of the commercial shad fishery in the United States, and a thoughtful discussion that addresses arguments raised by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) against fishing. In a painfully honest chapter, McPhee comes to grip with this difficult subject by professing to adhere to a “catch and eat” philosophy of fishing. With that sentiment in mind, he even includes an appendix of delectable (if you like to eat fish) recipes for shad and shad roe.

At its heart, The Founding Fish is a book about one person’s love of fishing; however, it also makes a relevant contribution to the conservation of the shad. As McPhee teaches the reader about the species, he also presents the fish and human beings in one integrated system rather than as members of two distantly-related worlds. In order for conservation to be successful, the species or system of interest must be considered in the context of human culture. McPhee presents the reader with this inclusive outlook.

The Founding Fish is an informative and worthwhile read, relayed in an engaging, conversational style. It is McPhee’s endless curiosity and unabashed enthusiasm for learning that make this work a memorable one. By the end of the book, the reader will find it difficult not to share his admiration for this remarkable species.