John Cotter – författare

Traditional fishery subjects covered include historic declines and changes in fishing fleets, fisheries management and stock assessments, data-poor situations, simulation and modelling of fished stocks, fisheries economics, assessing reproductive potential and dispersal of larvae, fisheries for sharks and rays, and use of marine technology. Additionally, related subjects of increasing importance now that ecological approaches to management are coming to the fore are presented. They include benthic ecology, ecosystem changes linked to fishing, life history theory, the effects of chemicals on fish reproduction, and use of sounds in the sea by marine life. Several chapters offer stimulating philosophical discussion of the many controversial areas still existing.

This significant book, edited by Andy Payne, John Cotter and Ted Potter and containing contributions by world-renowned fisheries scientists, including many based at Cefas (where Beverton and Holt''s original work was carried out) is an essential purchase for fisheries managers and scientists, fish biologists, marine scientists and ecologists. Libraries in all universities and research establishments where fisheries and biological sciences are studied and taught are likely to need copies of this landmark publication.

“I was in the car the first time music seemed strange: the instruments less distinct, the vocals less crisp.”

John Cotter was thirty years old when he first began to notice a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head. Next came partial deafness, then dizziness and vertigo that rendered him unable to walk, work, sleep, or even communicate.

At a stage of life when he expected to be emerging fully into adulthood, teaching, and writing books, he found himself “crippled and dependent” and in search of care. When he is first told that his debilitating condition is likely Ménière’s Disease but that there is “no reliable test, no reliable treatment, and no consensus on its cause,” Cotter quits teaching, stops writing, and commences upon a series of visits to doctors and treatment centers.

What begins as an expedition across the country navigating and battling the limits of the American health-care system quickly becomes something else entirely: a journey through hopelessness and adaptation to disability. Along the way, hearing aids become inseparable from his sense of self, as does a growing understanding that the possibilities in his life are narrowing rather than expanding. And with this understanding of his own travails comes reflection on age-old questions around fate, coincidence, and making meaning of inexplicable misfortune.

A devastating memoir that sheds urgent, bracingly honest light on both the taboos surrounding disability and the limits of medical science, Losing Music is refreshingly vulnerable and singularly illuminating―a story that will make listeners see their own lives anew.

“I was in the car the first time music seemed strange: the instruments less distinct, the vocals less crisp.”

John Cotter was thirty years old when he first began to notice a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head. Next came partial deafness, then dizziness and vertigo that rendered him unable to walk, work, sleep, or even communicate.

At a stage of life when he expected to be emerging fully into adulthood, teaching, and writing books, he found himself “crippled and dependent” and in search of care. When he is first told that his debilitating condition is likely Ménière’s Disease but that there is “no reliable test, no reliable treatment, and no consensus on its cause,” Cotter quits teaching, stops writing, and commences upon a series of visits to doctors and treatment centers.

What begins as an expedition across the country navigating and battling the limits of the American health-care system quickly becomes something else entirely: a journey through hopelessness and adaptation to disability. Along the way, hearing aids become inseparable from his sense of self, as does a growing understanding that the possibilities in his life are narrowing rather than expanding. And with this understanding of his own travails comes reflection on age-old questions around fate, coincidence, and making meaning of inexplicable misfortune.

A devastating memoir that sheds urgent, bracingly honest light on both the taboos surrounding disability and the limits of medical science, Losing Music is refreshingly vulnerable and singularly illuminating―a story that will make listeners see their own lives anew.