Fish Don't Exist IPA

In spring of 2020 the book “Why Fish Don’t Exist: A story of loss, love and the hidden order of life” by Lulu Miller was published and raced to the top of many pandemic reading lists. The Chicago Review of Books’ Kevin Canfield describes Miller’s work as a “thought-provoking amalgam of biography, memoir and history.” 

Though not central to Miller’s book, the eye-catching title introduces the difficult problem of the proper scientific classification of all the creatures that live in the ocean. The sea has such diverse and complex expressions of life that under close scrutiny (and taxonomists love to scrutinize) it’s difficult to lump all the ocean’s life into one group, using one word.