Cod Changes the World

Paper Summary:

Environmental science is not just one science and is not concerned only with the environment. Instead, environmental science covers a wide variety of topics from several different areas. This paper states that the additional areas also go beyond science and link environmental science to subjects such as politics, history, economics, and human geography. One way to consider the interdisciplinary nature of environmental science is to look at an example from the real world. This paper explains how "Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World" by Mark Kurlansky offers a good example. It points out that the book describes the impact that cod has had on the world and its basis is environmental science. It also shows the other topics and subjects that became part of the story of cod. This book is considered, with a focus on how it shows that environmental science is interdisciplinary.

From the Paper:

"Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World shows on many occasions that environmental science is also political. One example is seen where Kurlansky describes the fishermen of Sentinel Fishery, Newfoundland, trying to protect their source of cod. The book describes how the fishermen had claimed for years that offshore trawlers were taking their cod and greatly reducing the supply. As the text notes, "government scientists had ignored the cry of inshore fishermen... the deafness proved costly" (Kurlansky 4). After the fish had declined, the Canadian government finally closed the Newfoundland waters to groundfishing and the cod levels began to improve. The text notes that this was largely a political problem, where the fishermen knew that action needed to be taken, but where the government refused to listen to the fishermen. This has changed now, with a program now in place that allows scientists, the government, and fishermen to work together. One of the important things to note in this case, is that the decision to close the waters to groundfishing could only be done by the government. This shows the direct link between environmental science and politics. The other important thing to note is that fishermen and scientists now work together to maintain cod levels, with the government acting like middlemen. Kurlansky describes the program saying that "a few fishermen in each community are sentries, measuring the progress of the cod stock by catching fish and reporting their findings to government scientists" (Kurlansky 4)."

More papers on Cod Changes the World:

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