Welcome to Litsy!

How our insatiable appetite for tuna transformed a cottage industry into a global force (with a billion-dollar black market) and the dangerous effects of that shift for our planet, told through the lives of one fish and her fisherman. In 2004, a young, 642-pound bluefin tuna is caught, tagged by a prickly and iconoclastic New England fisherman, Al Anderson—and then is released. Fourteen years later, the fish’s life ends in Portugal, her destiny to be served on sushi platters in a high-end Madrid restaurant. But thanks to Al’s tag, the tuna’s remarkable story can be told, and, in honour of her cross-Atlantic journey, she will be given a name: Amelia. In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky and Susan Orlean, Karen Pinchin weaves a tale with elements of true crime, biography, investigative reporting, activism, ecology, business, and food culture. Spanning the early 1950s to the present, beginning with the rise in demand for Atlantic bluefin tuna in the northeastern United States, the narrative will establish the origins of tuna research and science, as well as the Atlantic fishing industry and its larger-than-life personalities. Expertly researched and cinematically written, Kings of Their Own Ocean makes the case that it’s not too late to preserve the beauty and abundance of our oceans, but we must act now.