It's amid this background that journalist and author Rose George wrote "Every Last Fish: A Deep Dive into the World of Fishes and Fishing" (Granta Books, 2025). George had previously written an award-winning book on the shipping industry, "Deep Sea and Foreign Going: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Brings You 90% of Everything," (Granta Books, 2013) and had become more aware of the significant issues facing the fishing industry.
"Every Last Fish" has been short-listed for the 2026 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.
Rose George: When I wrote my shipping book, I had a lot of skepticism about how the shipping industry works. But whenever I spoke to shipping people, they would say, "Well, if you think we're bad, you should look at fishing." And they were right. Fishing is way more complicated, and baffling, and a difficult industry in many ways.
One of the things that really fascinated me was the research into fish abilities and fish sentience. I definitely wanted this book to be not just about fishing but about fishes, the creatures, the animals. Because I don't think we think of them as animals. Most people think of animals as kind of furry, cute things that they can empathize with or sympathize with, whereas sympathizing with fish, I mean, Samuel Coleridge called them "slimy things in the water." And, you know, they're not slimy, but I still think that's an overwhelming attitude [among the public].
I wanted to look at the industry and look at the animals. I wanted to make it more than a dead thing on the plate. And I hope I did that.
RG: I didn't go fishing in Norway, but I did go to salmon farms, which is quite different. But I would say that there is a sense that it's a unique profession. It's a dangerous profession because you are in a dangerous element and every single ship can sink, no matter what size.
For example, let's compare the small-boat fishermen who I went fishing with in England and the Senegalese fishers. There's a lot of similarity in that there's a pride in what they do and the sense of being beleaguered. Definitely in Senegal, it's very pronounced in that a lot of their fish has just been stolen by European and other nations, and has ended up as fish meal in European countries. In Senegal, Sardinella — a variety of sardine — is a staple fish, and it's just not there anymore. What happens is, the more you fish, the more you tend to fish the smaller fish. So you'll fish down. You'll end up fishing juvenile fish. And then, of course, you've got no fish to grow up.
Fishing boats on a beach in Senegal, where much of the fish caught ends up in other countries. (Image credit: Anadolu/Getty Images)
Rex was banned from fishing wild salmon, and his fishing season was curtailed. [Editor's note: Rex Harrison is a small-scale fisher in England whom George spent time with for the book.] They definitely feel they're drowning in paperwork. I think that it's made it a very defensive industry, particularly in the U.K. because it is such a tiny industry. The biscuit industry is bigger. Yet fishing has this massive kind of cultural place that is really quite a nostalgic thing. There is an industry, but it's nothing like it was and the number of fishermen is much smaller. Young men don't want to go into fishing; young women don't want to go into fishing.
HO: What did you think was the biggest disconnect between the regulations and the reality of being on a boat?
You can't monitor a vessel at sea. It has to be self-reported. So what goes on at sea? All we have are fishing observers doing an extremely risky job. I think it's only about 2% of the fishing fleet that has an observer on board. There are some fish stocks that have much better, higher rates of observers. For example, in the U.S., Alaska — the Pacific Coast — has a very good observer system. [Editor's note: Fishing observers are independent specialists who travel on commercial vessels to monitor compliance and regulations.]
It's why you might find that the fish you're eating is not what you think it is, because there are so many opportunities for swaps. One fisher may have reached his quota on a particular stock of fish. There are lots of opportunities, particularly when you get into illegal fishing. You get something called trans-shipment, which is two fishing vessels exchanging catches at sea.
Rose George
RG: What shocked me the most was meeting the four Ghanaians who had taken jobs on a scalloper, thinking that the U.K. was reputable and everything was aboveboard. All their safety training had been done. Then, they got to work on this scalloper, and it was just a horror show. This was a scalloper that was working in the U.K. EEZ. [Editor's note: An EEZ, or exclusive economic zone, is the region between 14 and 230 miles (22.5 to 370 kilometers) from a country's coast that can be explored for its marine resources]. It was never on the high seas. It was always off the U.K., and yet these men were treated appallingly.
What that essentially means is, if you're working on a ship and you call in at one country but you immediately get on your ship, you get a trans-shipment visa. Because [the crewmembers are] on these visas, they couldn't really come ashore; they were basically imprisoned on their boats. And that's in the U.K.
HO: On the flip side, you spent so much time with fishers. What was the most moving story for you?
But another problem is seabird bycatch, because obviously the seabirds want the fish. Filey is right next to Bempton Cliffs, which is an RSPB [Royal Society for the Protection of Birds] reserve that's very famous for its puffins, but it's also got guillemots and kittiwakes and all sorts. Rex was just really sort of inured to this death toll of seabirds in his net. Then, this beautiful friendship arose between him and this guy from BirdLife International, Rory [Crawford].
I [also] really liked the fact that Captain Tom McClure [a trawler from the English county of Cornwall] and I managed to be friends, even though we disagree so profoundly about bottom trawling, and we always will. I think it's a terrible fishing method, but you don't have to be adverse. He still invites me out on his trawler, but given I was sick on it last time, I don't think I'm going to do that anytime soon. But the offer's there, which is nice.
Exclusive to Live Science ProHO: I really liked the story of Lillian Bilocca and everything that she did to try and improve the safety standards for fishers in the '70s and '80s. Do you think that safety has improved enough, or is there still a long way to go?
It was a very close-knit town. Lillian became this astonishing campaigner. They ended up going to London to meet ministers, and this raft of measures was put through with astonishing speed just because of the publicity and the ministers were embarrassed.
Since then, there have been loads of measures, but there are still serious issues.
RG: Yes and no. I mean, if you learn anything about fishing, I don't think you're going to come away from it particularly optimistic. But then there are people who are absolute experts about fishing who do find some optimism, so we have to learn from that.
The downside is that only 10% of fishing happens on the high seas. So although we need to protect as much of the ocean as possible, it may be that's not where the major problem lies, but it's a really good start.
Also, it expands because obviously the fish move; the populations recover; they move; things grow. It's such a win-win situation just to protect small pockets of the ocean and see that protective effect expand. But to do that, we have to stop taking everything from the ocean and assuming it's got an infinite bounty, because it clearly doesn't.
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greystonebooks Every Last Fish: a Deep Dive Into Everything They Do for Us and We Do to ThemIn Every Last Fish, Rose George dives into these questions by exploring the vast industries that support our appetite for fish sticks and salmon burgers, and the colossal illegal fishing trade whose practices and standards are unmonitored and often dangerous. Journeying to the bottom of the ocean and back, she examines the machinations of this $200 billion food system—one that’s growing rapidly even as fish populations disappear.
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