Food from the Sea
The Future of Seafood
This book looks at the challenges and opportunities facing the global seafood industry. With its low carbon footprint and proven health benefits, the seafood industry should have a great future. Instead, it faces a multitude of problems, mostly related to an increasingly negative image that is gaining traction in the media and wider society. John Goodlad tells this complicated and contradictory story through the lives of the people who produce food from the sea; the fishers and farmers who provide the fish and shellfish that we eat.
The book takes the reader around the world, being transported from Scotland to Mexico, from Canada to South East Asia and from Norway to Australia. In each location the story is told of the special people of the sea – the last of the ocean hunters and the first of the ocean farmers.​
ISBN: 9781910997680
Published: June 2025
Publisher: The Shetland Times
The Salt Roads
This is the extraordinary story of how salt fish from Shetland became one of the staple foods of Europe, powered an economic boom, and inspired artists, writers, and musicians. It ranges from the wild waters of the North Atlantic, the ice-filled fjords of Greenland, and the remote islands of Faroe to the dining tables of London's middle classes, the bacalao restaurants of Spain, and the Jewish shtetls of Eastern Europe.
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As well as following the historical thread and exploring how very different cultures were drawn together by the salt fish trade, John Goodlad meets those whose lives revolve around the industry in the twenty-first century and addresses today's pressing themes of sustainability, climate change, and food choices.
This book has been translated into both Dutch and Faroese and has also been released as an audiobook by Tantor Media.
ISBN: 9781780277912
Published: September 2022
Publisher: Birlinn
The Cod Hunters
This book tells the incredible story of the Shetlanders who fished for cod around Faroe, Rockall, Iceland, and Greenland. This is no dry history of boats and fish - it is a story about ordinary people who did extraordinary things.
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The geographical scope is extensive; from the remote fjords of west Greenland to the elegant dining tables of nineteenth-century London, from the fishing banks off Faroe to the best restaurants in the Basque Country, from the taverns of Tórshavn to the prison cells of Lerwick.
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The stories of many interesting people are told. What do a retired railway worker in Chicago, an embittered Fishery Officer in Lerwick, a bankrupt banker, the daughter of the famous explorer David Livingstone, and a Faroese Prime Minister have in common? They were all involved in some way in the story of the Shetland cod hunters.
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The Cod Hunters was short listed for the Maritime Foundation best book award in 2020.