Word: sturgeon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...should the Queen be grievously affected by her loss of rights to hunt wherever she pleases, or to claim any sturgeon caught within her realm. The last sturgeon to be caught in British waters was indeed presented to the Queen in 1970, but the fish is rather scarce and besides, the Lord Chancellor whimsically suggested, it is in the process of being replaced as a delicacy "perhaps by canned tuna...
...tank like Labrador pups." Just as canaries were once carried into coal mines to warn the miners of poisonous gases, Boyle tends to use fish as a measure of man. Bass taken from the Hudson off Bayonne have a taint of petroleum; shad roe is more than just fishy; sturgeon taken below Consolidated Edison's plant at Indian Point (those that manage to survive its giant water-cooling intake pipes) should be checked for radioactivity...
...consulting records and fishery experts, Boyle has established that the Hudson never was a salmon-run river. Some sections of the river are clogged with effluence but not yet ruined, Boyle points out. The river still has more fish than most men dream of-particularly striped bass and sturgeon, once known as Albany beef and now widely (though erroneously) thought to be all but gone from the river...
Urban New Yorkers are unlikely to turn out in great numbers to try to keep the Hudson safe for sturgeon. But the U.S. is becoming aware that nature nuts, bird watchers (as private interests call them) and conservationists may be fighting not only for the survival of the shad, the blue heron and the osprey, but for the survival of the human species. Boyle tells the story of 19th century Naturalist Verplanck Colvin who gave his life struggling to create what eventually became Adirondack State Park. The story-and this book-are a reminder that while Americans were busy getting...