Customer Reviews

Fishes: Their Journeys and Migrations (Kodansha Globe)

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This text, initially published at in the first half of this century, is an amazing read. This is ostensibly a book about how fish reproduce and how the desire to procreate leads to incredible behavioral patterns that were only just being understood. Roule's passion about the subject, however, takes the book out of the realm of mere description as he pays tribute to these fascinating animals. The content of the book focuses primarily on the travels of salmon and the European eel, while also touching upon the "migratory" behavior of herring, shad, tunny, trout, sturgeon, mackerel, cod and other fish species. The treatment of salmon and eel is where Roule it his best: he is successful at adequately portraying the magnitude of what these species go through in order to reproduce. The salmon's sojourn from the depths of the ocean to the mountains of the continent, and the eels journey in the opposite direction, from Europe to Bermuda, are, to Roule, focal points in understanding the behavior of fish. All other migrations are simply smaller versions of these great treks. Roule also presciently touches upon those environmental problems that will wreak havoc on some of the world's fisheries shortly after the first publication of the book.