Catching the Ebb

Drift-Fishing for Life in Cook Inlet

By: Bert Bender, Tony Angell

Write A Review

Paperback | 15 October 2008

At a Glance

Paperback
336 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.23 x 15.24 x 1.91

Paperback

$45.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $11.44 with

or

Ships in 5 to 10 business days

In a memoir that recounts thirty summers of fishing Alaskaas Cook Inlet, Bert Bender describes his parallel careers as a commercial gill-netter and a professor of American literature. His narrative celebrates the fishing life as he knew it; it also explores issues of sustainability in the commercial salmon fishery.Bender started fishing in 1963 with a thirty-foot sailboat converted to gas power; it had a 45-horsepower engine but no equipment for pulling in the net. Over the next decades, the fishery shifted as canneries adapted to new world markets for frozen salmon and fishermen built larger and more powerful boats. Following the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 and the subsequent rise of the farmed salmon industry, the Cook Inlet fishery experienced a decline. Bender traces this path of change, drawing on his academic specialties, American sea literature and the influence of evolutionary biology and ecology in American writing.The only book on Cook Inletas drift fishery, Catching the Ebb will appeal to readers interested in the sea or in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to its stories of people, boats, and the fishing life, the memoir addresses a question Bender posed in Sea-Brothers, a history of American sea fiction: Can we restrain our heedless pollution of the sea and avoid depleting ocean resources?

Industry Reviews

"Bert Bender goes fishing in this vivid story of a life lived deliberately, boat by boat, a book that brims with the sea and fish and the real places men can meet them, and under it all like the sea that Bender delivers with careful respect is a true and well-founded affection. Bender has dragged his nets up and down the coast of Alaska and the inlets of his studies, and brought up a world of work and earned contemplation. I loved this book." -- Ron Carlson
"That Catching the Ebb is written by a lifelong literary critic and writer who is also a professional commercial fisherman is what gives its unusual quality to this well-written and always absorbing book." -- Peter Matthiessen

Shipping

	Standard Shipping	Express Shipping
Metro postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Regional postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Rural postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95

Orders over $89.00 qualify for free shipping.

How to return your order

At Booktopia, we offer hassle-free returns in accordance with our returns policy. If you wish to return an item, please get in touch with Booktopia Customer Care.

Additional postage charges may be applicable.