In Let Them Eat Shrimp, Kennedy Warne takes readers into the muddy battle zone that is the mangrove forest. A tangle of snaking roots and twisted trunks, mangroves are often dismissed as foul wastelands. In fact, they are supermarkets of the sea, providing shellfish, crabs, honey, timber, and charcoal to coastal communities from Florida to South America to New Zealand. Generations have built their lives around mangroves and consider these swamps sacred.
To shrimp farmers and land developers, mangroves simply represent a good investment. The tidal land on which they stand often has no title, so with a nod and wink from a compliant official, it can be turned from a public resource to a private possession. The forests are bulldozed, their traditional users dispossessed.\
The true price of shrimp farming and other coastal development has gone largely unheralded in the U.S. media. A longtime journalist, Warne now captures the insatiability of these industries and the magic of the mangroves. His vivid account will make every reader pause before ordering the shrimp.
Autorentext
Kennedy Warne is author of Roads Less Travelled and founding editor of New Zealand Geographic. His articles have appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian, GEO, and other publications.
Inhalt
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 Tigers in the Aisles
Chapter 2 Paradise Lost
Chapter 3 Pink Gold and a Blue Revolution
Chapter 4 The Old Man and the Mud Crab
Chapter 5 The Cockle Gatherers of Tambillo
Chapter 6 A Just Fight
Chapter 7 Bimini Twist
Chapter 8 Candy and the Magic Forest
Chapter 9 The Carbon Sleuth
Chapter 10 Paradise Regained
Chapter 11 The Road to Manzanar
Chapter 12 Under the Mango Tree
Chapter 13 A City and Its Mangroves
Chapter 14 A Mangrove's Worth
Author's Note
Further Reading
Index.