The Unnatural History of the Sea compiles the most recent research of top marine scientists, including Jeremy Jackson and Daniel Pauly, into a succinct eulogy for our seas. But Roberts believes that, unlike doctors, we don't have to bury our mistakes. We can learn from our errors and implement reforms.
From the Preface:
In my work as a scientist, I find that few people really appreciate how far the oceans have been altered from their pre-exploitation state, even among professionals like fishery biologists or conservationists. A collective amnesia surrounds changes that happened more than a few decades ago, as hardly anyone reads old books or reports. People also place most trust in what they have seen for themselves, which often leads them to dismiss as far-fetched tales of giant fish or seas bursting with life from the distant, or even the recent past. The worst part of these 'shifting environmental baselines' is that we come to accept the degraded condition of the sea as normal. Those charged with looking after the oceans set themselves unambitious management targets that simply attempt to arrest declines, rather than rebuild to the richer and more productive states that existed in the past. If we are to break out of this spiral of diminishing returns and diminished expectations of the sea, then it is vital that we gain a clearer picture of how things have changed and what has been lost.
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Thanks! I've been trying, off and on, to compile statistics for the decline of wildlife (larger animals) in general. It drives me mad when someone writes that such-and-such a species is not endangered because we still have 2700 of them. Or when they think that something's declining from the 1970s levels so they quickly do a study so they can find out what we have now so they'll know if they decline any further. And I recall Jack Miner's 1923 book saying that bluebirds used to be as common as sparrows before the sparrows out-muscled them. Arrgh!