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Hungry Ocean, The:A Swordboat Captain's Journey

Hungry Ocean, The:A Swordboat Captain's Journey

List Price: $14.00
Your Price: $10.50
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Swordfihin on the banks
Review: This book was one of the greatest books i've ever read probobaly. The book was descriptive and very life like, it felt like you were there. Linda Greenlaw is very talented in writing and not to mention fishing. Seeing that she has caughten the biggest and most swordfish. This book was brilliant. I would have to say that everyone should read it. Its great for young adults and for adults. It is excellent and she is brilliant.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: hungry ocean
Review: I think that this book was excellent. It was definetley worth reading and listening to. I think that it would be a great book for book reports and just leisure reading or listening to on your way to work. Linda Greenlaw did a great job with this book I would like to hear or read more books by her. They are so riveting and catch you if you like fishing or boats.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey
Review: The Hungry Ocean piqued and at many times satisfied my new found interest in the salt water fishing trade. The author personalized activity and life aboard the vessel just enough, without going overboard. The many technical aspects of the book were spelled out without being too rudementary and yet the book contained enough "human" element that the reader could not get bogged down in the technical information.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: truefishing
Review: Being a Lobsterfisherman for more than 25 years, and growing up in fishing community where my Father and Grandfathers also made a living from the sea made me appreciate the encounters of being the Captain and crew of a Fishing vessel. Ms Greenlaw captured the essence of the need to be able to depend on your fellow fishermen as well as looking out for yourself. Not only as a safety factor but in the industry itself. Anyone who has ever captained a vessel, whether it be a crew of ten or one can appreciate the stress and responsibility of a captain for his or her crew and for making a days pay for all.I found "The Hungry Ocean" to be thoroughly enjoyable, I couldn't put it down! I praised it so highly that my son of 17 years read it for a book report!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Poor handling of potentially scintillating topic
Review: After reading "The Perfect Storm," I was anxious to get my hands on Linda Greenlaw's book to learn more about her experiences at sea. Throughout "The Hungry Ocean," I caught tantalizing references to episodes in her career that might have been developed into fascinating narrative. Unfortunately, Capt. Greenlaw falls short of the mark by failing to pursue those leads. The story line jumps back and forth through time along a fuzzy main story, and while this can sometimes enhance the reader's appreciation of the central action, it doesn't work in this book.

Along the way, she becomes mired in enough details to turn the copy into a textbook on navigation-- "I searched for the parallel rulers in the drawer below the chart table. Pulling the clear plastic rulers from the drawer, I laid them on the chart, sliding them so that the edge of one ruler connected our present position to another pencil dot to the east, south of Sable Island, that would act as my next waypoint. 'Walking' the hinged rulers across the chart so as not to change the angle of the straightedge, I moved them to the nearest compass rose and read our desired course from the numbers of calibration around the rose, which is a circular printing of the points of a true compass, north being straight up."

I have to add that I was also put off by the steady flow of heavy-duty profanity. Seamen apparently talk this way, and obviously leaving out every "sh--" and "f---" would erase that aspect of life on board, but when it's set into print, after a while it gets in the way of the point of a conversation.

The greatest omission, I think, is Greenlaw's overall perspective on this patchwork quilt of episodes. For example, she describes how, in the midst of a poor fishing spell, her crew once hung up and tortured a live shark by stabbing it repeatedly "like a giant piñata until a single match set it ablaze...The fumes of blackened flesh, a strangely satisfying stench, brought hope to the men discouraged by the lack of [swordfish]..." I sense she has rationalized this barbarity, yet she never makes a case for that rationalization. She also describes her crew members' heavy drinking and occasional fighting but doesn't linger to examine the possible cause.

Some of Linda Greenlaw's individual stories are worth hearing, but they're connected too loosely and told without panache. I'd like to hear more of what she has to say, and hope that next time she'll say it to a ghostwriter.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Don't Compare this to The Perfect Storm
Review: Is Greenlaw "capitalizing" on Junger's The Perfect Storm? Perhaps, but that misses the point. This book stands on its own as a chronicle of what a longline captain goes through. It's a business, and Greenlaw doesn't romanticize the experience. I really admired her for what she has achieved, both as a very successful female captain in a male-dominated industry and as a capable writer. Junger's portrait of life at sea, while very good, lacked a certain credibility with me. Greenlaw's credibility, on the other hand, is not at all suspect.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: From Chicago...
Review: To the tourist-basher in New England: Wake up and smell the money you're losing!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Environmental Rapist
Review: Linda Greenlaw's book accomplishes two things. First, it provides an absorbing story about the day-to-day experience of longline swordfishing in the north Atlantic; secondly, it reveals what may be called an utterly inexcusable attitude toward any and all who have sincere concerns regarding the environmental effects of that longline fishing.

Recently, the swordfish stocks in the north Atlantic have been downgraded from "overfished" to "depleted," and all swordfishing in federal waters from five degrees north latitude in the Atlantic has been suspended. Average size of swordfish caught by any method has fallen from over 200 pounds per fish to under 90 pounds per fish. Groups as diverse as the International Gamefishing Association and restaurants participating in the Give Swordfish a Break campaign have lobbied to bring longline fishing to an end. The city of Charleston, South Carolina last year won its case in U.S. District Court resulting from its refusal to allow the longline fleet access to its new fishing docks and fish processing facilities. The court backed the city. Delta Airlines has recently joined the many land-based restaurants and removed swordfish from its menus And so the story of opposition to longlingers goes.

And the growing opposition to longline fishing concerns itself with more than swordfish. It also has to do with an indefensible destruction of many other species caught in their millions of pounds as by-catch, a point entirely ignored in Greenlaw's self-serving, "me-too" little book.

But let's have Ms. Greenlaw's attitude about the environment and those who would protect and foster it revealed in her own words. Quoting from page 144 - 145, regarding chefs who refuse to include swordfish on their menus, "...little Chef Fancy Pants should work at perfecting his crème brulee and leave fisheries management to those who know more about swordfish than how best to prepare it." And undoubtedly Ms. Greenlaw includes myself and this review when she reveals her frustration "that the public is being brainwashed with misinformation by ... do-gooders." And the expertise and concern of the various groups who arm themselves with fisheries science information and statistics, she dismisses, wondering "how can they be so conceited to presume they might know better than the fishermen ... who have been working together for years to keep the stocks healthy? Well. As noted, swordfishing in federal waters was halted in 1998 because the stocks have become "depleted." So much for how the fishermen know best about keeping the "stocks healthy." Ms. Greenlaw's attitude resenting environmentalist's concern and action is perhaps connected with the over $13,000 she reports earning for herself during the month of fishing on which her book reports. Surely she's not making that much per month now as a lobster fisherman. And maybe that's why she comes across so bitter and intolerant in her book.

So if you'd like to know what it's like to fish for sword in the north Atlantic, this book's for you. However, if you'd like to avoid financially supporting an unrepentant environmental rapist who has a nasty attitude, be advised to avoid this book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I couldn't put it down!
Review: After reading and enjoying "The Perfect Storm", I was ready to devour this book. I have a friend with Gloucester, MA roots who is a commercial fishing captain in the Cape May area. He and I discussed the "Perfect Storm" at length; he knew several of the key people in the book. My brother has been a professor/administrator at Colby College in Maine for many years and knew the author when she was a student there. So I had some different perspectives as I approached the book, which I received as a Christmas present. I finished the book in a day and a half, although those days were also filled with numerous holiday activities that cut down my reading time. It is very readable, very informative, and very entertaining. The author is a great role model for young women everywhere.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hunger Ocean a Great Catch
Review: "Hungry Ocean" is one fisherman's story, told from the heart. Linda Greenlaw serves it up straight, strong and raw-edged. Her prose grabs you by the scruff and tumbles you onto the deck of the Hannah Boden to see and feel for yourself how she and her crew live and work. She does this very, very well.

Take note that you will not curry favor with Linda by addressing as a "fisherwoman", "fisherperson" or such - see is a woman who is a fisherman, thank you very much. This woman would be a natural heroine for feminists except that she makes so many of them look like feeble whiners. A natural leader, she rose to the top of a brutal, completely male-dominated profession and did so without ever seeing gender as an issue, must less a problem.

This book will appeal to all who love a good adventure and especially to those with a nautical bent. If you are politically incorrect (secret handshake here), so much the better. Those of you who are ooh-soo ecologically sensitive may not enjoy it, but it's a great read for the rest of us.


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