Cod is one of the most widely consumed fish in the world. For many years, the Atlantic cod industry took center stage, but partly thanks to climate change and overfishing, it is more and more likely that the cod on your kitchen table or in your fast food fish fillets came from Alaska’s Pacific Cod Fishery.

Alaska Codfish Chronicle is the first comprehensive history of this fishery. It looks at the early decades of the fishery’s history, a period marked by hardship and danger, as well as the dominance of foreign fishermen. And the modern era, beginning in 1976 when the United States claimed an exclusive economic zone around the Alaska coasts, “Americanizing” the fishery and replacing the foreign fleets that had been ravaging the resources in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. Today, the Pacific cod fishery is, in terms of poundage, the second largest fishery in Alaska, and considered among the best-managed fisheries in the world.

This history is extremely well documented, does not spare details, and is accessible to general readers. It incorporates nearly a hundred photographs and illustrations and is sprinkled with numerous observations from fishing industry journals and reports, even incorporating poems and recipes, making this an especially thorough and unique account of one of Alaska’s most iconic and important industries.

James Mackovjak has been involved with Alaska’s fisheries since he first arrived in Alaska in 1969, working as a commercial fisherman and operating a small fish-processing business at Gustavus, in Southeast Alaska. His books include Aleutian Freighter: A History of Shipping in the Aleutian Islands Area and Alaska Salmon Traps.

— Carmel Finley, author of All the Fish in the Sea: Maximum Sustainable Yield and the Failure of Fisheries Management

— Pacific Fishing

— Fish and Fisheries

— Choice