from National Geographic (July 2006, p. 78)

[greygirlbeast]

Such a concept [overfishing] was unthinkable back in 1969 when Congress appointed the Stratton Commission to prepare the first report on the U.S. coastal zone, which subsequently laid the foundation for current coastal policies. The Stratton commissioners saw the ocean as a source of endless bounty, encouraging the federal government to build up U.S. fishing fleets and drill for oil and gas offshore. Some 40 years later, says Lubcheno [Dr. Jane Lubcheno, OR State Univ., past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, etc.], it has become painfully obvious just how finite marine resources are and how great a bite humans have taken out of them: 90 percent of the world's large pelagic fishes, like tuna, marlin, and sharks, gone; three-quarters of the world's major fisheries exploited, overfished, or depleted; and enough oil spilling out of U.S. cars to equal an Exxon Valdez-size spill every eight months. Nearly 150 dead zones now occur around the world, including one off Oregon that first appeared in 2002 and that has recurred twice since. Most ominous of all, Lubcheno says, is that the oceans absorb fully half of all the CO2 released by humans—perhaps one of the greatest services the seas provide. But the vast amount of CO2 entering the oceans today is making them more acidic, which, combined with rising sea temperature, could have devastating consequences for anything with a shell or skeleton, essentially making them slower, thinner, and more susceptible to predation.

Comments

[tagplazen.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, ruin the big surprise, I just got home, wandered down to the mailbox, and found the new issue waiting for me. I was saving it for tomorrow (we end up leaving NG's in the truck because there's always that time you forget and/or finish a book and end up on the ferry with no reading material which absolutely sucks, yet on the other hand lends itself to readinging album liner notes, which rules when all the people you know still think vinyl is the superior choice, still get stoned, and still find arguing about which studio had the best board ever is considered a perfectly acceptable way to pass the evening), but now that the cat is out of the bag...

[yvonnenavarro.livejournal.com]

Every time we see one of these shows on cable, the ones with titles like "Deadliest Catch" or some crap (about how dangerous it is to catch lobsters and crabs in the vicious ocean, yadda yadda), I always end up ranting to Wes about the wastefulness of it and the overfishing. Are people really eating all that seafood at, say, Ports of Call in Los Angeles and other markets like that? I doubt it, especially when most of it just sits there, exposed to the warm air, while only the lowermost layer has the benefit of ice. I look at all that seafood and am more than a little horrified at how predatory mankind is.

[blubeagle.livejournal.com]

Yvonne,

Me too. Humankind has always horrified me at how preditory we are. This is why I like animals better than humans.

I also think that animals have vastly superior intelligence. I'd rather be with my dogs than with humans, any day. The only time that they are predatory, is when dinner is being made. :)

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

This is why I like animals better than humans.


To be fair, I must interject here that humans are, of course, animals. I am rather strident about this, as so much of what is currently wrong has arisen from Homo sapeins' long history of believing itself to be something more than merely one of all those billions of species of animals which live or have lived previously upon the Earth. Also, I do not allow myself to believe that non-human animals are somehow more noble than human animals. They're just not humans, the same way that humans are not sharks or barn swallows or gazelles. Humans do this one thing really, really well. Humans adapt their enviroment, and having made of it a friendlier place, they proceed to multiply unimpeded by the usual forces that keep any given animal or plant or fungal or bacterial or protozoan or viral species in check. They are not perfect at this, but they are perhaps better at it than any other species which has yet evolved on Earth. And this is the problem. Humans are a species of animal which, like all animals, strives blindly to survive, at whatever cost. In this case, the cost is proving to be the entire biosphere.

But. I am going on, aren't I?

[opalblack.livejournal.com]

I would disagree with the use of predatory. Predation implies some manner of forethought and caculation or purpose by a predator, but in my opinion humans display no such thing. Humans are just mindlessly destructive.