King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon

This book about salmon is written by a geologist, so he's particularly interested in how salmon and the landscape interact, and how human interference with rivers is driving salmon to extinction.

Montgomery starts the book with an overview of salmon and their lifecycle, and the importance of rivers to the life of salmon and the importance of salmon to the health of forests. He then looks at the history of Atlantic salmon, first in Britain and then on the east coast of North America, and how they were driven to the brink of extinction by human greed, despite the understanding that over-fishing the salmon and destroying their rivers was the cause of their extinction. The exact same historical process is playing out in the Pacific show more Northwest, even though we ought to know better.

Ultimately, Montgomery argues that better management of our rivers is the key to restoring salmon populations, and he provides some concrete ideas for how to do this. Not that anyone will actually listen to these ideas.

Overall, this is a fascinating look at the life cycle of salmon and the interaction between salmon and the landscape. The history chapters didn't need to be nearly as long as they are to make the point that humans are greedy and bad at working for long-term gains when there are short-term gains to be had instead. show less

Once I began reading this book, I realized that I did not like how the illustrations included only blue, green, and yellow throughout. In addition, most of the scenes from the book were of the bottom of the ocean, but they were dull and not very creative or detailed.
The story starts with the King of the fish who has a fishhook stuck in his nose. He demands all the other fish to get it off and the Old Sea Raven keeps crying “theeyesofahare!” This part of the book foreshadowed to the hare that would enter the story as a main character later in the story. The Sea turtle then says, “Old Sea Raven means that only the eyes of a hare can cure you. I have to swim to the land to lay my eggs, and I have seen hares there.”
The turtle show more convinces the rabbit to come with him to the sea, by fooling him, saying, that there are “whole fields of sea lettuce sway with the waves. Sea carrots are there for picking.” Her, we see one of the main ideas of the story, deception.
Once the turtle and the hare arrived at the King’s throne, the hare claimed to the king that he “ left his sharpest eyes in a box by his bedside.” And was only wearing his “farseeing eyes to enjoy the view.” I thought this part of the book was funny because although I thought the hare had been oblivious to the trick that the turtle played on him, the hare ended up tricking the entire school of fish, the King, and the turtle. show less