Book excerpt: World Fisheries Resources provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of how this commodity is used. The author examines the various aspects of fishing resources from their biological basis through to marketing and consumption. The subject is set in context by tracing the historical development, from its archaeological origins to the industrial expansion of the 19th and 20th centuries. The work comes up-to-date to discuss the modern situation and current trends in both the developed and developing worlds and highlights how exploitation of the resource has increased in recent years.