Book Review in Nature - Jonathan Balcombe

20th June 201629th November 2016

What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

Jonathan Balcombe Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2016)
ISBN: 9780374288211

More than 30,000 species of fish — about half of all vertebrates — roam global waters. And as ethologist Jonathan Balcombe notes in this engrossing study, breakthroughs are revealing sophisticated piscine behaviours.

Balcombe glides from perception and cognition to tool use, pausing at marvels such as ocular migration in flounders and the capacity of the frillfin goby (Bathygobius soporator) to memorize the topography of the intertidal zone.

Yet, he argues, the over-exploitation of wild stocks, notably of apex predators such as tuna, points to the need for change on moral as well as ecological grounds.

To read review in Nature, please click here

Misstatements about Jonathan published in new book

UPDATE: the publisher has agreed to replace the erroneous passage with the following sentence: "Fish authority Jonathan Balcombe views the morality of fish-eating as a serious matter, and he abstains from eating animals, fish included." Jonathan's book "What a Fish Knows" is now cited in Nussbaum's book and included in the index.

Several erroneous statements about me appear in a new book by the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum titled Justice For Animals: Our Collective Responsibility (Simon & Schuster, 2022). For the record, and contrary to statements mistakenly attributed to me, I do not eat fish (since making the shift to a vegan lifestyle in 1989), I view the morality of catching and eating fish as a highly serious matter, and I do not regard any fisheries as being “humane.”

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