” . . . I just think it’s impossible to really have the full experience of being human if you live within a totally controlled, totally contained sort of hermetically sealed, safe environment. I’m not saying to court danger is romantic, but we were bred as animals to survive in a physical world, and the world we live in, like office cubicles, these are not what we’re born to. We can’t really have an experience of all of the other parts of us unless we’re getting out there and living in a much more diverse, exciting, interesting habitat.” Matt Rigney, interviewed by Sarah Amandolare, in ‘We’re Destroying the Seas, on Salon.com.

“There are a lot of fish in the sea. At least, there used to be. In “In Pursuit of Giants,” Matt Rigney, an ocean restoration activist, uses a series of big-game fishing trips — to Nova Scotia, Malta and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico — to reflect upon the declining bounty of the world’s oceans. As he explains it, over the past century poor oversight and outright greed have allowed the fishing industry to decimate fish populations, particularly the big species, such as swordfish, marlin and tuna, that humans tend to find most delicious. Rigney uses fishing travelogues (he does environmentally sensitive catch-and-release, naturally) to cultivate an appreciation for the ocean’s natural beauty. But he also spends a fair amount of space ticking off the implements of destruction that industrial fleets use to maximize their catch, such as drift nets (walls of netting that extend for miles) and scallop dredges, which rake the muck at the bottom. At the book’s conclusion, he provides policy recommendations and some personal tips — among them, stop eating endangered fish — that can help relieve some of the damage.” —Aaron Leitko, in The Washington Post.

“The love that Matt Rigney shows for fish, especially of the giant fish and true marvels of the water, in the pages of In Pursuit of Giants reminds me of my father in that sense. You can feel it through the ink of every page.

That love, however, is in danger. That is also something you can viscerally feel through the heft and seriousness of the book itself. All the while luring you in with a very tangible affection and sense of wonder for the creatures of the sea – especially those at the very apex of the “fish” family — Rigney drops the second shoe of knowledge that as a species we have drastically and perhaps permanently changed the sea and endangered the very existence of these creatures.

All of us think of the sea and the ocean as this permanent thing. Surely the ocean is too big for man to have influence and sway over; surely that is the one thing we can not be called into account over changing, right? Over all that water — or all within it, perhaps — there must be just as many fish now as there ever were. Right?

Wrong. Through modern fishing techniques and greed we have done to the watery depths what we have always done when we “want” something, and we know other people will pay for it because they want it to.” —Michael Jones, in Seattle Post Intelligencer