Animals an the Environment

The author uses the theme of animals and the environment to contemplate humankind's responsibility for the deterioration and destruction of the natural world and the creatures that live in it. There are multiple references to humankind's manipulation of animals and their environments to achieve selfish ends, such as digging for oil in the ocean or using high levels of growth hormone in salmon farms, presumably to create a larger yield of salmon and therefore make the farms a greater profit. Knut mentions the latter incident when he visits a sushi restaurant with Hiruko, noting that the excess growth hormone in Baltic salmon farms has caused “such a population increase that the salmon had started eating each other” and then further explains that “Tuna's on the verge of extinction” (16), likely also because of human intervention. In real life, multiple species of tuna are endangered...