[NYTr] A Fight to Save the Most Valuable Fish in the Sea - Rutgers, Oct. 18

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Jane Franklin - Oct 15, 2007

A Fight to Save the Most Valuable Fish in the Sea
Rutgers Professor Raises Awareness of Threat to Menhaden

For more information, please contact
Carla Capizzi, 973/353-5262
or email: capizzi at rutgers.edu

On Oct. 18  Bruce Franklin will explain how overfishing menhaden
endangers us all

(Newark, N.J., Oct 12, 2007) -- Who cares about the fate of a bony,
stinky, oily fish? H. Bruce Franklin does, and so will anyone who reads
his latest book, The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and
America. Thanks to the Rutgers-Newark professor, many Americans are
learning that their own fates, and the future of our seas, are tied, to
a degree, to the fate of menhaden, a species in danger of being fished
into extinction. If you would like to know why menhaden are so
important, you can hear Franklin discuss his findings during a free
public lecture Oct. 18, from 4 - 7 p.m., in the Paul Robeson Campus
Center, Multipurpose Room. A reception, also free and open to the
public, will follow.

Franklin also co-authored the award-winning "The Fate of the Ocean," in
the March/April 2006 issue of Mother Jones, which won the John Bartlow
Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism.

The Montclair, N.J., resident is no biologist; he is a cultural
historian and the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American
Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, where he has taught American
literature, science fiction and American studies since 1975. But
Franklin is a saltwater angler, and it was while fishing in southern New
Jersey's Raritan Bay that he became aware of the menhaden and their
plight. Franklin and his companions saw a plane fly over a school of
menhaden; a fishing boat soon appeared, netting up the entire school.
Franklin noticed that for days afterward, that area of the bay was
devoid not only of menhaden but of bluefish and weakfish as well.

Franklin began a painstaking investigation into menhaden - also called
bunkers and pogies - and their key role in American history, including
the fish's surprising relation to the Pilgrims and Native Americans
(when Native Americans taught the colonials to plant fish with their
corn as fertilizer, menhaden were the fish they used.) Franklin found
that historically, menhaden have provided the largest catch of America's
fishing industry, converted into animal feed, fertilizer and oils used
in manufacturing everything from soap to linoleum. But they are also the
favorite food of other fish, as well as seals, whales and seabirds such
as loon, herons, ospreys and egrets. In areas where menhaden are
overfished, Franklin explains, the populations of other fish have
greatly diminished.

Almost as alarming is the correlation Franklin reports between algae
blooms -"red tides"and "brown tides" - and the diminishing numbers of
menhaden. Menhaden eat algae, and the fewer the schools of menhaden to
eat the algae, the more algae survive, leading to deadly algae blooms
that kill massive numbers of fish.

Franklin will present some of the historical and ecological findings
from his book during the Third Annual Rutgers-Newark Distinguished
Faculty Lecture Oct. 18. Franklin was named the 2006/2007 Provost's
Distinguished Research Scholar by R-N Provost Steven J. Diner in
recognition of "exceptional scholarly work on a subject of fundamental
intellectual importance."

Franklin was recently recognized by the American Studies Association at
its annual convention, with the ASA holding a special session devoted to
Franklin's lifetime achievements.

Franklin is author or editor of hundreds of articles and reviews that
have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Science,
Discover, Atlantic Monthly, and The Nation. In addition to The Most
Important Fish in the Sea, published by Island Press, he also is the
author or editor of 19 books, including:

*  Vietnam and Other American Fantasies. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2000

*  Prison Writing In 20th-Century America. New York: Penguin Books,
1998.

*  The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs, and Poems. Boston:
Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996.

*  War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination; New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Paperback edition, 1990

* M.I.A. Or Mythmaking in America. New York: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1992.
Revised and expanded edition (paperback), New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1993.

Franklin's first book, The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology, has
been continuously in print since 1963 and is used in many college
courses. Franklin pioneered the academic study of science fiction,
teaching one of the nation's first university courses in science fiction
in 1961 while teaching at Stanford, and has written extensively on the
subject. In 1991 Franklin was the guest curator for the National Air and
Space Museum's exhibition, "Star Trek and the Sixties," which became the
most popular show in the museum's history.

The Brooklyn native was a factory worker, deck hand on a tugboat and a
navigator and intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command
(1956-1959). Franklin earned his BA from Amherst College in 1955 and his
Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1961.

In 1966, in protest against the Vietnam War, he resigned his commission
as a captain in the US Air Force Reserves.

For more information, please contact Carla Capizzi, 973/353-5262, or
email: capizzi at rutgers.edu