Fish Science

To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.

Few fish are as beloved, or as obsessed over, as the American shad. Although shad spend most of their lives in salt water, they enter rivers by the hundreds of thousands in the spring and swim upstream heroic distances in order to spawn, then return to the ocean.

When summoned to a fantastical world and granted powers by a broken System, most freshly minted protagonists would strap on their big-boy boots and get ready for their stats to start climbing. But Fischer isn't like most MCs. In fact, he doesn't want to be a hero at all. Fame? Fortune? Power? He had enough of all that in his old life. Discovering forbidden fishing techniques and petting every cute animal that comes within scritching distance? Now that's a good time.

An underwater exploration that overturns myths about fishes and reveals their complex lives, from tool use to social behavior. There are more than 30,000 species of fish - more than all mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined. But for all their breathtaking diversity and beauty, we rarely consider how fish think, feel, and behave.

An innovative new take on the travel guide, Rice, Noodle, Fish decodes Japan's extraordinary food culture through a mix of in-depth narrative and insider advice. In this 5,000-mile journey through the noodle shops, tempura temples, and teahouses of Japan, Matt Goulding, cocreator of the enormously popular Eat This, Not That! book series, navigates the intersection between food, history, and culture, creating one of the most ambitious and complete books ever written about Japanese culinary culture from the Western perspective.

Cod is the biography of a single species of fish, but it may as well be a world history with this humble fish as its recurring main character. Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could.

In Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers, Gierach looks back to the long-ago day when he bought his first resident fishing license in Colorado, where the fishing season never ends, and just knew he was in the right place. And he succinctly sums up part of the appeal of his sport when he writes that it is "[A]n acquired taste that reintroduces the chaos of uncertainty back into our well-regulated lives".

For centuries, humans ignored sound in the “silent world” of the ocean, assuming that what we couldn’t perceive, didn’t exist. But we couldn’t have been more wrong. Marine scientists now have the technology to record and study the complex interplay of the myriad sounds in the sea. Finally, we can trace how sounds travel with the currents, bounce from the seafloor and surface, bend with the temperature and even saltiness; how sounds help marine life survive; and how human noise can transform entire marine ecosystems.

When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. He snapped a quick photo and shared it with experts. Soon he was on a five-year journey, searching for this enormous, enigmatic creature in the lush, remote forests of Eastern Russia. That first sighting set his calling as a scientist.

Fatal Forecast chronicles a dramatic fight for survival aboard two small fishing boats that were ambushed by a horrific surprise storm just southeast of Cape Cod. Soon after the Fair Wind and the Sea Fever reached the fishing ground at Georges Bank, they were hit with hurricane-force winds and massive 90-foot waves that battered the boats for hours. The direction of the wind made it impossible to turn back.

Harlow Bevans was a changeling mermaid working as a diving consultant for the Earthen Conclave. Then he came along. Charybdis. A serial killer who possessed her body and wrecked her mind. Now she's an inmate - patient - at Edelweiss Mental Institution. When a haunting song lures her to the scene of a brutal murder, the calm of the past few months is shattered. A fellow patient is dead, and Harlow is caught standing over his body.

Being a mermaid does help Fred when she volunteers at the New England Aquarium. But, needless to say, it's there that she gets involved in something fishy. Dangerous levels of toxins have been found in the local seawater. A gorgeous marine biologist wants her help investigating. So does her merperson ruler, the High Prince of the Black Sea. You'd think it would be easy for a mermaid to get to the bottom of things. Think again...

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. When his specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish that he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation.

Fischer has everything he needs in life: blossoming friendships, a menagerie of cute animal companions, a waterfront property with easy access to fishing, and enough coffee to take out a small elephant or a really big dog. Unfortunately, Fischer can’t catch a break. Cosmic forces? Still throwing curveballs. The bigwigs in the capital? Starting to sniff around his business. Cults? Still culting. Plus, awakened beings are washing up on his shores like flotsam after a storm. And worst of all? His coffee guy ghosted him!

Try as he might, Fischer still can't catch a break. Tropica's forces have just perpetrated the fantasyland equivalent of crashing the king's party, kicking over the punch bowl, and making a series of rude gestures on their way out. Unfortunately, they're about to learn firsthand that when you take a bully down to the mat, it's best to make sure they don't get back up. Because their enemies are unearthing long-forgotten powers, and if those dabbling in the resulting destructive chi succeed, they could become even more annoying than the time Corporal Claws hid all of Fischer's pants.

Thanks to overwhelming might, a cadre of violent animals, and a weaponized fish or two, Tropica has wiped Gormona's royal forces from the map. Now at the helm of his own Church, Fischer finally has some time to relax. But life in Tropica is much like fishing from a rocky shore: it's only a matter of time before you hook a snag.

Back on Earth with nothing more to show for his long, strange trip through time and space than a ratty towel and a plastic shopping bag, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription, the mysterious disappearance of Earth’s dolphins, and the discovery of his battered copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy all conspire to give Arthur the sneaking suspicion that something otherworldly is indeed going on.

Maggie is finding it harder and harder to get along with her stepmother and stepsiblings while her father is away. It doesn't help that every time Maggie finishes cleaning laundry, flying pigs swoop in to muddy everything up and get her into trouble! One day while she's out collecting berries and her stepbrother is fishing, Maggie catches a magical fish herself. The fish promises to make one of her wishes come true, but only if she frees him. Maggie wants a new family more than anything, but how much faith can she put into a talking fish?

Investigating the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, Greenberg reveals our damaged relationship with the ocean and its inhabitants. Just three decades ago, nearly everything we ate from the sea was wild. Today, rampant overfishing and an unprecedented biotech revolution have brought us to a point where wild and farmed fish occupy equal parts of a complex marketplace.

Fans of Shark Week, Sharknado, and all things shark-related will want to sink their teeth into this exciting shark-infested chapter book. Join real-life cave divers, extreme photographers, and researchers as they brave thrilling undersea adventures! Kids who are familiar with the popular National Geographic Kids Chapters line are sure to be on the edge of their seats over these new totally true tales of adventure and survival.