Out on the Deep Blue: True Stories of Daring, Persistence, and Survival from the Nation's Most Dangerous Profession

Nineteen diverse fisher-writers, including Peter Mathiessen, Spike Walker, and Linda Greenlaw, take readers swordfish harpooning on the Georges Banks, winter crabbing in the Bering Sea, sea-urchin diving off Maine, herring fishing in Alaska, and shark-harpooning off Scotland. Together, they explore the extremes of living, working, and sometimes dying at sea, creating the most intensely personal portrait of fishing and fishermen to date. With its many layers and rich textures, Out on the Deep Blue represents the best of creative nonfiction, offering a satisfying hybrid of interior and exterior landscapes and themes -- adrenaline-surging survival narratives, personal and relational crises, the losses of declining resources, and meditations on man's place in the natural world.