A Fight to Save The Most Valuable Fish In The Sea : Rutgers Professor Raises Awareness of Threat to Menhaden

(Newark, N.J., Sept. 18, 2007) -- Who cares about the fate of a bony, stinky, oily fish? H. Bruce Franklin does, and so will anyone who reads his latest book, The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America. Thanks to the Rutgers-Newark professor, many Americans are learning that their own fates, and the future of our seas, are tied, to a degree, to the fate of menhaden, a species in danger of being fished into extinction. If you would like to know why menhaden are so important, you can hear Franklin discuss his findings during a free public lecture Oct. 18, from 4 7 p.m., in the Paul Robeson Campus Center, Multipurpose Room. A reception, also free and open to the public, will follow.

Franklin also co-authored the award-winning The Fate of the Ocean, in the March/April 2006 issue of Mother Jones, which won the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism.

The Montclair, N.J., resident is no biologist; he is a cultural historian and the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, where he has taught American literature, science fiction and American studies since 1975. But Franklin is a saltwater angler, and it was while fishing in southern New Jerseys Raritan Bay that he became aware of the menhaden and their plight. Franklin and his companions saw a plane fly over a school of menhaden; a fishing boat soon appeared, netting up the entire school. Franklin noticed that for days afterward, that area of the bay was devoid not only of menhaden but of bluefish and weakfish as well.

Franklin began a painstaking investigation into menhaden also called bunkers and pogies --and their key role in American history, including the fishs surprising relation to the Pilgrims and Native Americans (when Native Americans taught the colonials to plant fish with their corn as fertilizer, menhaden were the fish they used.) Franklin found that historically, menhaden have provided the largest catch of Americas fishing industry, converted into animal feed, fertilizer and oils used in manufacturing everything from soap to linoleum. But they are also the favorite food of other fish, as well as seals, whales and seabirds such as loon, herons, ospreys and egrets. In areas where menhaden are overfished, Franklin explains, the populations of other fish have greatly diminished.

Almost as alarming is the correlation Franklin reports between algae blooms - red tides and brown tides and the diminishing numbers of menhaden. Menhaden eat algae, and the fewer the schools of menhaden to eat the algae, the more algae survive, leading to deadly algae blooms that kill massive numbers of fish.

Franklin will present some of the historical and ecological findings from his book during the Third Annual Rutgers-Newark Distinguished Faculty Lecture Oct. 18. Franklin was named the 2006/2007 Provosts Distinguished Research Scholar by R-N Provost Steven J. Diner in recognition of exceptional scholarly work on a subject of fundamental intellectual importance.

Franklin was recently recognized by the American Studies Association at its annual convention, with the ASA holding a special session devoted to Franklin's lifetime achievements.

Franklin is author or editor of hundreds of articles and reviews that have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Science, Discover, Atlantic Monthly, and The Nation. In addition to The Most Important Fish in the Sea, published by Island Press, he also is the author or editor of 19 books, including:

*Vietnam and Other American Fantasies. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000

* Prison Writing In 20th-Century America. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

* The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs, and Poems. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996.

* War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination; New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Paperback edition, 1990

* M.I.A. Or Mythmaking in America. New York: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1992. Revised and expanded edition (paperback), New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993.

Franklins first book, The Wake of the Gods: Melvilles Mythology, has been continuously in print since 1963 and is used in many college courses. Franklin pioneered the academic study of science fiction, teaching one of the nations first university courses in science fiction in 1961 while teaching at Stanford, and has written extensively on the subject. In 1991 Franklin was the guest curator for the National Air and Space Museums exhibition, Star Trek and the Sixties, which became the most popular show in the museums history.

The Brooklyn native was a factory worker, deck hand on a tugboat and a navigator and intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command (1956-1959). Franklin earned his BA from Amherst College in 1955 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1961.

In 1966, in protest against the Vietnam War, he resigned his commission as a captain in the US Air Force Reserves.