Check out this website (in English as well as Spanish) on shifting baselines in the Gulf of California, Mexico. There are three recently published papers featured, too, each documenting some consquence of the shifting baseline syndrome (and each led by scientist Andrea Saenz-Arroyo).
The first shows that Gulf grouper populations declined long before official statistics were collected. The second shows that, when compared to younger fishermen, older fishermen from the Gulf of California name five time as many species as once abundant but now depleted. The third presents descriptions of the Gulf of California marine ecosystem from travellers during the 16th to 19th centuries.
The website also displays this wonderful pictorial of the shifting baselines syndrome (by Anne Randall and Pier Thiret):
Incidentally, these papers helped inform Callum Roberts lastest book The Unnatural History of the Sea, which Daniel Pauly said dealt excellently with the shifting baselines syndrome and "should be obligatory reading for all those who think everything is fine."
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A picture is worth a thousand words. A series of three is worth a million.
Ms. Martin, was that they were too over-whelmed to care much.
Its time to accept that the youth experiences of the 1960's (a time when brains were under-stimulated and seeking knowledge rather than feeling bombarded by it) are long, long gone.
I saw a seminar once, a decade ago or so, where a guy explained why he believed apples had originally involved to have their seeds dispersed primarily by bears. I can't remember the reasoning now, but it seemed sensible at the time.